Reframing the Homelessness Crisis

When I visit downtown Seattle, in whose metropolitan area I have lived most of my life, one of the first things I usually notice is the homeless. When I disembark from the light rail at Pioneer Square, my nostrils are immediately assailed by the smell of urine. The entire sidewalk opposite the station is usually lined with tents and the huddled shapes of their denizens. Disembark further north and the stench is less palpable, but the homeless are just as omnipresent. Between Westlake station and Pike Place Market, one will generally cross paths with more than one homeless person. I’ve never visited Chinatown, but according to a recent article in The Seattle Times, it has lately become swamped with homeless people as a result of efforts by the mayor to clean up other neighborhoods.

In 2023, the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that Seattle had the third-largest homeless population in the United States (14,149), exceeded only by Los Angeles and New York City (71,320 and 88,025, respectively). Proportionally, that actually leaves Seattle in the lead, at least out of these three.

Another thing these cities (and most of the other American cities with the highest homeless populations) have in common is their progressive politics. Seattle, for instance, has not had a Republican mayor since 1969. This is significant because progressive Democrats represent the wing of American politics primarily concerned with housing and otherwise caring for the poor and the indigent. One would expect these cities to have made the greatest strides toward creating affordable housing and otherwise combating the factors that lead to homelessness. Instead, they continue to flounder.

Seattle’s ineffective attempt to deal with homelessness by driving homeless people out of particular areas of the city and into other neighborhoods echoes the attempt by the City of London to deal with a similar problem in the 1840s. Back then, the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields was notorious for its overcrowding by Irish immigrants, drunks, beggars, and other undesirables. Therefore, as Peter Ackroyd explains in London: The Biography (2000), “between the years 1842 and 1847 a great thoroughfare known as New Oxford Street was run through it, leading to wholesale demolition of the worst lanes and courts with an attendant exodus of the poor inhabitants—although most of them moved only a few streets further south.” It’s a sad comment on a progressive city when its strategy for dealing with extreme poverty was already proven inefficacious nearly 200 years ago on another continent. Other local municipalities have periodically made token efforts to clear homeless encampments off the sidewalks and from other locales, but all this achieves is moving the rootless elsewhere. If the theory is that this will somehow motivate them to better support themselves, it clearly does not hold up.

To be fair, homelessness, like all manifestations of poverty, is an extremely difficult issue to address through public policy. It is a phenomenon with numerous root causes, none of which can be very efficiently addressed by local governments. Commonly cited causes include unemployment, substance abuse, and domestic violence. The most influential factor, however, seems to be access to affordable housing. Poverty in itself has less influence than might be expected on whether individuals become homeless. Detroit, for instance, is home to far worse poverty than Seattle, but despite having a similar total population, its homeless population is less than half that of Seattle. Why? Because the cost of living in Seattle is grossly higher.

Why is it so expensive to live in Seattle, and in so many other big, politically progressive cities? As a major business center, home to companies like Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, and Starbucks, Seattle is a city to which many educated people with good career prospects want to move. Consequently, there is a high demand for housing in Seattle, which drives up rent and other prices. Unfortunately, it is not easy to regulate prices, especially in a country with a heavily deregulated capitalist economy like that of the United States. Therefore, there is no easy way to make housing affordable for low wage earners.

Nevertheless, some relatively obvious, albeit challenging, solutions leap to mind. In theory, cities with large homeless populations need to purchase the necessary real estate, build the necessary housing, and rent it out to the impoverished at affordable rates, perhaps also supplementing their incomes with a universal basic income. All this is easier said than done, of course, but there have already been somewhat successful experiments along these lines. What is stopping these cities from going further?

At root is the problem of values. Although only a small percentage of American voters define themselves as libertarians, this is largely because libertarian values are so deeply ingrained in American culture as to usually go without saying. In broad terms, libertarianism teaches us not to help others, that our economic fortunes rise and fall by our own efforts, and that everyone’s economic circumstances can be attributed to their own work ethic or lack thereof. One does not generally associate libertarianism with a city like Seattle; however, the corporations making Seattle rich are led, and largely staffed, by college graduates who have been educated to be politically progressive and to look after their own economic interests first.

In other words, progressive values today are mainly defined by people who, in their social standing and economic prospects and spending habits, embody the capitalist, consumerist values that their politics decry. These are people who never really do anything for the homeless except vote for Democrats, whose general claim to represent the interests of the poor is substantiated only by occasional token gestures in that direction (which admittedly is still more than can be said for Republican priorities). Therefore, it is no surprise that cities dominated by progressive voters have not made much headway in fighting homelessness.

To acknowledge this reality is not to condemn progressives or anyone else. Homelessness, along with many other social ills, is an afterthought for most of us because we usually already have demanding jobs and countless other demands on our time, attention, resources, and energies. We tend to think about the homeless—and all others less fortunate than ourselves—only when we cross paths with them. Moreover, since those interactions are usually unpleasant, our kneejerk reaction is not one of sympathy or empathy. Neither a hardworking progressive nor an otherwise kindhearted religious conservative will often feel much commonality with a homeless person. Homelessness thereby becomes a problem to be ignored rather than addressed.

Finding commonalities is essential to empathy, which is essential to compassion. In a February 2024 article for the American Philosophical Association, I observed that the heavy rates of unemployment and underemployment among autistic people may be contributing to the disproportionate number of autistic homeless people. Since I am autistic myself, the realization that autism may determine whether many people become homeless or not is sobering, and makes me regard the homeless in a more compassionate light. Might this be a way to increase public investment in this issue?

There are, of course, those among the homeless population who might slide into vagrancy no matter what policies we might pursue. However, for every vagrant who has created their own problems, there is an autistic person whose poor interview skills keep them from finding steady employment despite being otherwise qualified, a victim of domestic abuse with nowhere to turn, someone whose mental health issues render them incapable of supporting themselves, and so on. Drawing attention to the prevalence of these factors seems a necessary step in reframing how we think about homelessness.

This reframing is as crucial as concrete policy proposals because we perceive issues through the lenses of our values. Homelessness can be effectively addressed through such measures as building affordable housing, instituting a universal basic income, and even just easing zoning laws to allow more homes to be built. However, these policies will never be implemented if more people do not demand them. So far, we usually seem content with policies designed to uproot the homeless and make it easier for the rest of us to avoid them. If keeping the homeless out of sight and out of mind is all we care about, we will never be able to address homelessness with the seriousness that it deserves.