Seattle in the Forefront of Homeless Services

No doubt about it, many of the homeless in this socially progressive city certainly have an attitude.

They saunter into city and county meetings, demanding funds for homeless programs. They march through downtown, posting flyers seeking blankets to get them through the chilly nights. They even set up a campground on the plaza of the County Administration Building, successfully pressuring officials into providing an indoor shelter for the upcoming winter.

Residents, businesses and municipal officials here have fostered this expectant air with their tolerance and support for programs that help the homeless get off the streets and back onto the path toward stability. City and county housing officials say that every year they place 25% to 50% of the homeless in transitional housing units, which for many are a prelude to permanent dwellings.

Seattle has for more than a decade been at the vanguard of the effort to help its 14,000 to 17,000 homeless--4,000 of whom are on the streets here on any given night. This year, the city will spend $7.4 million on services for the homeless--an 84% increase from 1989. The county will spend several million dollars more.

“Seattle is in the forefront of a lot of homeless programs and has tested a lot of different means in trying to help the homeless,” said Bonnie Hall of the congressional General Accounting Office, which last year studied the impact of federal spending on homelessness in four major cities including Seattle.

Of the four cities, Seattle uses the federal money most effectively, Hall said. The city and county’s proven results allow Seattle to continue securing large federal grants for its homeless programs.

Long before the homeless issue grabbed national headlines, Seattle and King County began dealing with the problem, according to national officials. In the early 1980s, social workers and local government worked in concert to raise and allocate money to find homes for the countless poor who were displaced by the city’s downtown revitalization effort.

Later, they became even more aggressive, snaring a disproportionate share of federal grants for homeless services. “The people in Seattle are experts,” Hall said. “They’re very savvy about working together and going after the money.”

Seattle began by building more shelters. Today, there are more than 2,300 emergency shelter beds in Seattle and King County, compared with 945 in Orange County.

But the community was also quick to recognize that shelters offer little more than night-to-night relief. Working with dozens of nonprofit agencies, Seattle also designed homeless programs--such as education, job training and placement, health care and outreach to the chronically ill and mentally disabled--that have since been copied by other metropolitan areas nationwide.

More important, Seattle and King County began early on to provide both transitional and permanent housing for the homeless.

City residents were the first in the nation to tax themselves--in 1981 and 1986--to help finance low-income, publicly assisted housing for the needy. By late 1996, when the $50-million Seattle Housing Levy fund will be exhausted, 1,250 housing units will have been built, city officials say.

In spite of the number of homeless people placed in transitional housing units each year, city and county officials concede that the overall homeless population has not declined--mainly, they say, because displaced people from other regions of the country continue to flock to the city.

Critics of city government, however, suggest the homeless population hasn’t decreased partly because officials are using the funds inefficiently. Instead of distributing local and federal money to nonprofit agencies that run the services, the critics said, city officials should run the programs themselves.

“The money is being spent to keep the nonprofits in business,” said Jordan Brower, a Democratic candidate for the City Council.

Officials argue, however, that the network of nonprofit organizations makes Seattle the envy of other cities with homeless problems.

National advocates for the homeless agree. They also praise local government leaders for recognizing and identifying homelessness and its consequences early on.

“Seattle has enlightened leadership,” said Mary Ann Gleason, director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Coalition for the Homeless. “If you want to pretend that there aren’t needy people in your community, then those people don’t get help. It’s that simple.”

One of Seattle’s latest efforts to help the homeless is the Union Hotel, which opened in May, 1994, with 50 renovated studio apartments.

Kenney Taylor, 34, was one of the first to move in. In the previous five years, Taylor had shuffled back and forth between the street and shelters.

“When I lost my [construction] job and was homeless, I never dreamed I’d have my own place again,” Taylor said as he relaxed in his home last month. He has filled the modest space in his sunny, high-ceilinged room with a dining table and two chairs, a twin bed, two well-worn rugs, posters and a small stereo system that sits on a shelf full of books and plants.

“You can’t believe the feelings I get . . . living in my own place, where I can cook my own meals,” said Taylor, who credits programs run by a downtown homeless group for curbing his drug and alcohol addiction. “It just brings a lot of happiness, a lot of pride.”

Seattle’s transitional housing programs have also garnered national accolades. One such facility is the 57-unit Aloha Inn, a former motel managed by its residents.

The occupants can stay as long as six months, but must work at the facility at least 15 hours a week, at a $2-an-hour stipend that goes toward their $48 monthly rent. And they must put away $60 a week, a $1,400 nest egg that is used to secure permanent housing.

Before moving into the Aloha three months ago, Jerry Hopkins was living in his car. But then someone stole it.

“I gripe and complain about doing the 15 hours,” he said good-naturedly of his responsibility to keep the place safe and secure. “But, actually, I know a good thing when I see it.”

Outreach, training and placement programs are also the key to the area’s plans to move transients into a stable environment. After securing a new federal grant, one group recently expanded its mental health outreach program by sending 12 mental health clinicians onto the streets and to other agencies to work with mentally ill homeless people. In contrast, Orange County’s outreach program to the mentally ill homeless was eliminated in October, a casualty of the bankruptcy.

Last year, Seattle’s group staff provided outreach and assessment services for 460 mentally ill homeless adults. The staff also helped 102 clients obtain housing.

One program envied by other cities is Common Meals, a 12-week job training course that places the homeless in the food service industry. In addition to classroom lessons in resume preparation, interviewing techniques, self-esteem and stress management, the “students” are also trained by the best chefs in the city.

Cheryl Sesnon, executive director of Common Meals, said 80% of the program’s students are employed after graduation. To date, 85% of those who landed jobs are still employed, she said.

Along with attempts to help the homeless, however, Seattle has in the last two years adopted restrictive ordinances similar to Santa Ana’s camping ban. One prohibits people from sitting or lying on public sidewalks in commercial districts during business hours. Another forbids “aggressive begging” in public.

“What we were trying to do with the ordinances is . . . make it clear that civility and certain standards of behavior are required of everybody in public places,” City Atty. Mark Sidran said. “Sidewalks are intended for walking and not for people to park their backsides. And I think people have the right not to be intimidated into giving.”

But the outcome of a confrontation with the homeless earlier this year is more typical of Seattle’s attitude. During last March’s “Safe Haven” drive by a group of homeless who wanted officials to provide them with an indoor shelter for the winter, transients pitched tents in a vacant lot near the Kingdome during the NCAA basketball tournament.

The participants were promptly arrested. But they won a major victory when county officials later allowed them to set up camp every night at the plaza of the County Hall of Administration. Later, a downtown businessman donated an empty commercial office for the campers to use as a shelter through next summer. After seven months of sleeping in the plaza, they moved into the building last month.

Tim Ceis, policy director for the county executive officer, said local officials worked with the advocacy group out of “compassion for the homeless,” not because they felt pressured politically.

“Maybe we just have a different attitude concerning the homeless here in Seattle, or maybe it’s also because this town has gone through economic downturns that resulted in tremendous economic loss for the people here,” Ceis said. “We don’t view this as a transient problem, but rather, we view it as our own problem--one that we all need to work together to solve.”