Seattle’s incoming mayor, Katie Wilson, will inherit a homelessness crisis that will define her ability to lead.
Seattle’s homeless population needs more than another round of aspirational promises. They need and deserve an operational reset grounded in compassion, accountability, and the courage to confront realities the city has failed to address for years.
She must replace press releases and ceremonial groundbreakings for housing that may never materialize with programs that support the homeless in reclaiming their lives from the grip of untreated mental illness, addiction, and dangerous encampments that have taken root throughout the city.
The scale of Seattle’s crisis is staggering. HUD’s 2024 Point-in-Time count identified 16,868 people struggling with homelessness in King County — 7,058 sheltered and 9,810 unsheltered — yet even this understates the emergency. It omits the thousands of K-12 students and their families couch-surfing or scraping together money for a few nights in a motel. And at the current 23% growth rate, Mayor Wilson will walk into office confronting a humanitarian emergency approaching 22,500 people.
Meanwhile, encampments proliferate, fentanyl deaths continue at historic highs, and families, businesses, and public workers bear the daily trauma of a system that is not working.
For years, Seattle has clung to the comforting illusion that more subsidized housing units alone will solve homelessness. Despite billions in public spending, housing pipelines remain clogged, construction timelines stretch into decades, and operating costs soar.
But for the majority of those living unsheltered — 78% of whom are struggling with serious mental illness or addiction — homelessness is not merely a housing shortage. It is the downstream consequence of untreated disease.
Often further complicating their illnesses is a condition called anosognosia that prevents them from recognizing their own illness. Consequently, they decline help not because they choose the street, but because their minds cannot see another path.
The mayor must change this trajectory.
If she intends to succeed where past administrations have failed, she must look to the Discovery Institute’s new report, which details exactly how cities can harness forthcoming federal reforms to drive real results.
Her reset must include:
Prioritize transitional and treatment-based recovery modelsSeattle must stop investing disproportionately in permanent supportive housing that takes years to build and rarely addresses root causes. It must instead prioritize transitional recovery housing that is staffed with clinicians, case managers, and vocational supports, and must require engagement in these services as a condition of stay.
Partner with high-performing recovery organizationsNon-profits such as We Heart Seattle and Union Gospel Mission Rescue Missions have a great track record in helping individuals transition to stability. These organizations know how to walk with people through trauma, detoxification, relapse, and rebuilding. Make these organizations central to the city’s strategy — not an afterthought.
Empower and deploy multidisciplinary “CARE+” outreach unitsCombine mental health professionals, emergency responders, and trained law enforcement to intervene proactively, stabilize crises, and compel psychiatric or addiction evaluations when individuals pose clear risks to themselves or others. Washington’s Involuntary Treatment Act already provides necessary tools, but they must be used more consistently and, of course, humanely.
Enforce public health and safety laws to restore order while providing pathways to treatmentIn City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court affirmed that Seattle can ban public camping to restore order and safety for all residents. In tandem with this effort, the city must provide the homeless with restorative programs.
Demand performance, not platitudes, at every level of the systemSeattle must instill accountability at every level of the homeless system: from the individual, to the non-profit, to the government officials responsible for the homeless system.
It must measure outcomes and provide quarterly dashboards on those outcomes and the spending required to achieve those outcomes. Housing without treatment is a revolving door. Harm reduction without recovery is slow-motion abandonment. But it doesn’t have to stay this way.
Katie, you have the chance to lead Seattle into a future where compassion is not a slogan, but a force that restores people and the city they call home.
This is your moment. History will remember the mayor who chose courage over habit, transformation over stagnation. Seattle’s soul is waiting to be mended. Now is the time to lead the city there.
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Michele Steeb is the founder of Free Up Foundation and author of “Answers Behind the RED DOOR: Battling the Homeless Epidemic,” based on her 13 years as CEO of Northern California’s largest program for homeless women and children. She is a Visiting Fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness Initiative. Follow them on Twitter: @SteebMichele and @DiscoveryCWP.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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