Good morning, everybody.
My thanks to community members and the media for attending this important press conference in the midst of the unprecedented crisis of affordable housing and homelessness that we face in our city and region.
This is one of the wealthiest regions in the history of humanity.
We have two of the richest men in the world living here.
And yet we face a political situation where the same political and business elite who have been an obstacle to expanding funding for permanent social housing and permanent supportive housing are the same entities that have also opposed expanding immediate services to make sure we give humanity and dignity to our homeless neighbors.
Meanwhile, activists and advocates have been doing the work on the ground to ensure that we stand with all homeless community members.
In particular, in 2014, through our People's Budget Movement, we were able to win, for the first time ever in our city, a mandate and funds for homeless people to survive.
This over the years took shape into what we see in front of us today, which is tiny house villages, which come equipped with secure shelter for our homeless neighbors, combined with plum toilets, washer, dryer, and kitchen facilities, and most importantly of all, case management and a community that takes care of them and gives them transition to permanent housing.
Since their inception, tiny house villages have become one of the most successful routes to transition homeless people into permanent housing.
And we congratulate the Low Income Housing Institute, Nicholsville, SHARE, WEAL, and all faith leaders and community members who have stood steadfast in helping give shape to these villages.
That is why it's our pleasure and honor that the faith community has taken a strong stand for two things this year.
One is supporting the legislation that I have brought forward from my office to expand the zoning code so that we can site tiny house villages throughout the city.
and second and as important in the people's budget this year to expand funds so that tiny house villages can actually be situated with case management and our movement people's budget movement is demanding that no dollars be spent in dismantling existing tiny house villages we do not agree that that is a constructive use of our resources.
43 faith leaders from the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist communities have joined together in supporting Tiny House Village expansion.
So please join me in welcoming Reverend Angela Ying of the Bethany United Church of Christ.
Good afternoon.
As leaders of faith, we urge the city of Seattle to greatly expand the number of tiny house villages to provide basic safety and human dignity to people currently living on our streets.
Homelessness is a crisis crying out for our humane, compassionate remedy, and we can do something about it.
Last year, a record 191 people experiencing homelessness died on Seattle and King County streets.
This is unacceptable.
This past January alone, surveyors found 5,228 people sleeping throughout the county without shelter.
Tonight, in Seattle, more than 3,500 residents will go to sleep under bridges, in tents, on sidewalks, in abandoned buildings, and in cars.
This is, again, unacceptable.
This does not have to be.
We can fix the problem now, not next year, not in 10 years, now.
And we know that we have found that tiny house villages work.
Tiny house villages have proven to be a lifeline to so many of our neighbors without homes.
Currently, we have only nine tiny house villages, and all are thriving in Seattle, providing life-saving shelter and community to hundreds of women, families, and their children, LGBTQ people, straight and gay couples, immigrants and refugees, domestic violence survivors, and people with pets, groups of people and our neighbors who often cannot have access in traditional shelters.
Many of our faith communities, churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques have been involved in building and sponsoring tiny house villages.
The tiny houses are 8 by 12 foot structures that provide shelter, safety, and yes, human dignity and life for people without a home.
The houses have heat, light, insulation, power outlets, and locking doors, and on average cost only $2,700 to build.
In tiny house villages, residents are able to overcome the isolation, the trauma, the loneliness and the disempowerment of living on the streets, not to mention being cold.
Their belongings can be safe.
They share a common kitchen and dining area, laundry for their clothes and washrooms, counseling office and security huts.
Residents can have vital services and they find that they can have housing and continue working along with access to education, daycare for their children, transportation and mental health services, which are much needed.
In the last three years, according to the Low Income Housing Institute, Lehigh, which operates many of our tiny house villages in Seattle, more than 500 people, yes, more than 500, living with homelessness have been able to transition from tiny house villages into permanent, stable, affordable housing.
That's incredible.
In fact, the city's Human Services Department has found that tiny house villages are the most effective shelter program at moving people from homelessness into permanent housing.
We're excited that our city, Seattle City Council member, Shama Sawant, is leading the way and has brought forward legislation to allow for up to 40 tiny house villages in our city of Seattle.
our Martin Luther King Jr.
King County.
Collectively these villages will deliver durable shelter and community to an additional 1,200 people or more.
Housing is a human right and the continued crisis of homelessness is a stark reflection of the moral failing of our society.
Our church, Bethany United Church of Christ, and many other churches, including New Hope Baptist, and all the churches here, and others that weren't able to be here.
Synagogues, mosques, temples are all supporting this.
And we stand behind Shama Sawant and the city as we hope that you will expand the tiny house villages.
This fall, as the city council and the mayor take up the city's 2020 budget, we urge political leaders to tackle the humanitarian crisis, the moral obligation by funding a large expansion of the number of tiny house villages.
We can do this in Seattle.
You can do this in Seattle.
We must do this.
We will do this.
Thank you.
As housing justice advocates have acknowledged, tiny house villages are not a substitute for permanent housing.
And in fact, some of the most tireless leaders who are advocating for tiny house villages are also people who have been on the front lines to demand that city set up progressive revenues by taxing big business and the wealthy to fund publicly owned affordable housing and supportive housing for those who need it.
Somebody who has been tireless in declaring how unconscionable it is that we are letting our homeless neighbors live on the streets without giving them humanity and dignity is Reverend Robert Jeffrey of the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church.
We're right here on the church's land, so please welcome Reverend Jeffrey.
First of all, I just want to thank Councilman Sawant for her tireless efforts and all of my colleagues for showing up to the front.
This effort is vital.
It's all about transitioning people off the street.
If you're living in a comfortable house right now and you have heat, you have water, you have all of the comforts of living in your home or in an apartment, some of this might seem foreign to you, but just be caught on the street, be caught living under a bridge with your children.
Be a mother who's suffering abuse and there's no way out except to take your children and to leave and you can't find any way where to stay.
You don't want to stay in shelters where your children are subject to molestation.
You don't want to stay in public places where your children could be abused or you could be abused.
You want your own dignity.
You want your own privacy.
You want your own kind of space where you and your children can sit down at night and thank God for just living and thank God for being.
Those kinds of spaces are not that available in this city.
You have homeless women and children sleeping under bridges, sleeping in cars.
You have homeless men sleeping all over this city.
And to put them all together and lump them all together in terms of the way, in a derogatory way, is really we're better than that as a city and we're better than that as human beings.
This is a matter of, this is a human issue.
Do we treat people who are homeless as human beings or do we treat them simply as we treat non-humans?
The issue for us is privacy.
The issue for us is dignity.
The issue for us is that these people deserve a space, an interim space, until they can get themselves together, until they can move into permanent housing.
This is not, these are interim spaces.
But there are immediate spaces.
There are spaces where people can move immediately.
They can leave their car immediately.
They can leave sleeping under the bridge immediately and come into a space that is private, that gives them respect, and that gives them human dignity.
This is the least that a civil society should do for its people.
Many of these people formerly paid taxes.
They were good citizens and they fell through the cracks.
It's our responsibility.
It's the responsibility of us all not to be callous in this hour, especially with as many people as we see sleeping along the corridors of our city.
So I'm here and I'll always be here.
Hopefully, We can get it through, get the message through that tiny homes is a good interim way.
to solve many of the problems of our homelessness.
I know that people say, well, you have shelters, you have these things.
These shelters do not give people the dignity.
They do not give people the privacy.
They do not give little girls the safety that these tiny homes give.
This is about safety.
This is about privacy.
This is about dignity.
This is about honor and respect.
And because I'm homeless does not mean that I forfeit the right to those things.
So we're here.
It's my hope that callous, the callousness that I hear in the conversations that's going on, that callousness that's coming from the mouths of people who have everything, who have it all, who want for nothing.
How can they be this callous?
How can they deny the crumbs from their table to people who are suffering?
So we're here.
And we join Sharma and all of the others, Lehigh and everybody else, and all of the ministers who have signed on board this letter, begging and pleading with this city, let's be decent, let's be humane.
This is a problem.
It's not going away.
We have to find solutions.
This is a great interim solution.
It's better than the 19th, 18th century solution.
We have to grow up.
Those solutions were good in the 18th and 19th century.
This is the 21st century.
Let's try to find 21st century solutions to enter the interim problem of bringing people off the street, preparing them for life in a better life and housing.
Thank you.
Homelessness disproportionately affects our black community members and communities of color as a whole, women, and LGBTQ people.
But we also know that the cycle of inequality in our society goes on beyond homelessness.
It goes on to the lack of living wage jobs, the lack of opportunities through education, and the ability to have decent standards of living.
And that is why it is important we have advocates who understand that all these issues are interconnected.
And one such advocate is Reverend Lawrence Willis of the True Vine of Holiness Missionary Baptist Church.
So please welcome Lawrence Willis.
Good morning.
I'm excited about being a part of this movement around the crisis of homelessness.
I've been a part of this movement for about 10 years, but coming together with faith leaders, community, nonprofits around homelessness is exciting because not only are we able to house and keep them out of the cold, but also transitioning to living wage jobs.
That's one thing that I'm excited about the partnership with because now in the economy that we live in, we need living wage jobs as well as affordable housing.
And so together with Councilwoman Sawant and the City Council and all of the faith leaders that are here and across this city and across this county, we want to put a big bite out of this homelessness.
Also, with transitioning, we need to be able to help our young people have the affordability to have a safe place to live, but also transition to be able to go to school that's close to where they live.
And so together, I believe we can combat this.
We can act as supporters of those that are in our community, those philanthropists, those that have the economic structure to end homelessness.
So together with the Urban League, with the churches and the city, I believe we could really combat this effort to end homelessness.
So I'm just excited about being a part of this and to work with the city and all that are here today and just see the lives that are being affected right now.
That's not sleeping under the bridge, that's not being threatened by brutality in the streets, they have a safe place that they can lock their door and have a good night's sleep.
So I'm excited about being a part of this.
And just being here is just great for the churches to come together.
So as True Vine Church and as faith leaders, we're here to end homelessness.
God bless you.
Thank you.
The most courageous fighters for housing justice and the effort to address homelessness have been our homeless neighbors themselves, because it takes a special kind of courage to fight this battle when it is affecting you personally.
And that is why we are especially fortunate that at our press conference today, we are joined by Danette Davis and Carol Spaulding, who are both tiny house village residents, and we are really looking forward to hearing from them.
Danette.
A few months ago, my husband and I went from living a normal life to sleeping in our car.
Since coming to Tiny Home Village, They gave us back our dignity.
We have very comfortable units that we sleep in with heat.
We have meals provided.
We have very clean bathroom facilities, and we have case management.
My husband and I have been blessed with being able to be put on a waiting list for senior housing, and that was our goal.
So I am very grateful, very grateful.
They gave us back our dignity, and I'm very grateful.
Hi, I've been living here for a few months now and it sure beats living in the van.
It's so nice to be in a, it's going in a positive, like what you said, to be part of this, to be part of the homeless getting off the streets and into a place where they can find direction to a better way of life.
We have, like, the Goodwill offers training right around the corner.
The Millionaire's Club offers temporary service.
But to be here, it's so clean and some of, you know, the bathrooms are clean, the laundry.
It's pretty luxury, really.
It's really pretty luxury, but it's out of, you know, getting out of the gutter and getting into real life.
So thank you.
Thank you, sisters, Jeanette and Carol.
The Low Income Housing Institute has played a critical role in advocating for and establishing the tiny house villages that have, as Reverend Ying said, provided a lifeline for our homeless neighbors.
So please welcome Lehigh board member Melinda Nichols.
It's a privilege to be here this morning.
I've been on the Low Income Housing Institute board for 21 years.
We talked about the emergency of homelessness.
It isn't a casual thing where you can think about it forever.
Every night people are sleeping out in the street.
And think about it, when you're going to go and get in your car, you leave your house and you go, it's really cold out here, and then you jump in your car.
Try to imagine that you're waiting between your house and your car for 24 hours.
So we are, I have every confidence that the individuals who live in the city of Seattle have good hearts.
They're very interested, they're very concerned.
What they want are real things that they can do.
And one of those things is to do volunteer work to build tiny houses.
We have done those historically.
We've asked for volunteers.
Hundreds of people show up.
And so we really appreciate Charma Savant's support for expanding these.
We need more of them.
We have thousands of people who are still out on the street.
So the Low Income Housing Institute is happy to partner with anyone who wants to help with this.
We need more villages.
And it's not, I appreciate that they are not luxurious.
They're the size, these houses are the size of three pieces of plywood.
It's not that we are pampering homeless people.
We are doing the very best we can to keep them safe, to have them have a locked door, a roof over their head, and heat.
And the other thing that these villages do is have people support each other.
to have people, we have people who help people move on to get jobs, to get futures.
These are not permanent.
These are emergency response to homelessness and we look forward to expanding them until we don't have people who are living under a bridge.
Thank you very much.
As Melinda said, the vast majority of people in Seattle, ordinary working people in Seattle and progressive small businesses have a compassionate viewpoint on this crisis and strongly believe that homelessness is a moral crisis and that we need to address this in every way we can.
And contrary to the right-wing anti-homeless viewpoint put forward by Safe Seattle and Speak Out Seattle and people like Scott Lindsey.
What we see is that our house neighbors are eager and hungry to carry out practical solutions to address the immediate problems faced by our homeless neighbors and are also strongly in support of expanding progressive revenues.
Just to give you one tiny statistical example, in a poll that was done of our house neighbors near the Georgetown tiny house village, 76% said they wanted the tiny house village to continue to be sited on its current location and that the tiny house village residents had been great neighbors.
This is the kind of solidarity we are seeing building among homeless people and housed people because, especially because of the enormity of this crisis.
To date, I have not met a single person, myself included, who has not either experienced homelessness themselves or knows someone, a friend, family member, neighbor, co-worker, who has experienced at least a bout of homelessness, if not chronic homelessness.
And let's not forget the thousands of Seattle Public School students and Washington State public school students who face homelessness.
This is an abomination and we need to make sure that we do everything in our power to push back against anti-homeless ideas.
Homelessness is not a crime and if it is a crime, it is a crime committed by a society that has failed thousands of our neighbors and it is a crime committed by the elite who want the status quo to prevail.
We don't want the status quo to prevail.
We want a better society.
We want a city that is based on social justice and a city that is affordable for all regardless of income.
So please join us at our tiny house village public hearing on this Thursday, October 17th at 5 p.m.
It is very, very important that if you are watching this and you feel that homelessness is a crisis that needs to be addressed and your heart is with our homeless neighbors, please come and testify in favor of the tiny house village legislation.
and also join us on October 22nd when the Seattle City Council will have its second public hearing for the budget and we are urging everybody who is supporting our people's budget demands to join us as well.
We're happy to answer questions but thank you everybody.
Do you know if you have any support among your fellow council members for this for the expansion of tiny house villages period let alone this large of an expansion?
I'm not sure if any of my colleagues have formally expressed support, but I know that there is a lot of support because we've had repeated discussions on this issue, not on the legislation itself, but on the idea that the legislation is based on.
We have had many public testimonies that I have heard my colleagues express support for.
And I have every confidence that we will be able to do this.
But it is important that the community advocacy be not only kept going, but expanded so that the city council and the mayor's office are very clear about where our community stands on this.
And this is a large, large ask with a total of $12 million, a little over $10 million coming from the general fund.
Any idea?
Where that should come from what it should take away from as I've said before and and as we have fought for relentlessly we need the city to Win progressive revenues meaning progressive meaning not regressive right now.
We have the nation's most regressive tax system working people middle class homeowners and small businesses are disproportionately taxed and big corporations and the wealthiest among us are taxed very little or nothing at all and that's why we need to expand those progressive revenues our people's budget will be continuing to advocate for that but in the more immediate sense what we are saying is first of all the city needs to stop spending on on initiatives that we know do not help our city.
We hear city council members talk about data-based and evidence-based every single day.
Well, do something that's evidence-based.
The sweeps of our homeless communities do not work.
The city spends roughly $10 million on these sweeps every year.
Those should be stopped immediately, and every dollar that is wasted on these inhumane and ineffective sweeps should be used to fund initiatives like tiny house villages and the numerous services that are on offer and are restrained only by the lack of funds.
Furthermore, the people's budget movement is also demanding that no more dollars be spent than already is on the police department and that all the dollars allocated in the mayor's budget proposal this year for expanding the police department be used for restorative justice programs, decriminalization programs, and for homeless services.
So when you talk about sweeps, are you talking about pulling some of the money away?
I've heard other council members talk about pulling funding for the navigation team.
Yes, the navigation team is the technical term for the group of City of Seattle employees who carries out the sweeps and certainly The humane aspects of the services need to be retained, but the bulk of the money that is used on the sweeps is used to literally sweep our human beings from one spot to another, and from that spot to another, and from that spot to another.
This is a complete waste of money.
It also increases the trauma that people who are already traumatized feel.
We need this to end, absolutely to end immediately.
And on the reduction of the police force, we just had the Minneapolis police in town yesterday talking with business leaders and some of the crime on the streets that we see with repeat offenders, things like that.
And one of their points was that we have a far lesser amount of police officers than they do, and they see success because they do have a larger force.
So how do you justify reducing ours?
Well, if you again, you know, if you want to be rooted in data and statistical evidence, then I can tell you that the statistical evidence has does not point towards greater funding for police for increased public safety.
As a matter of fact, one of the big problems we face is in the first place is the lack of police accountability and the lack of safety and security that our black and brown community members especially young people face in and let's not let's not forget that our police department is still under the federal consent decree so that's point number one point number two is that all statistical analysis shows, nationwide, shows that the biggest threat to public safety is the growing economic, social, and racial inequality in our society.
So we want to, if our neighbors want to address what they perceive as problems of public safety, then they should absolutely join us in the struggle to reduce inequality, and more concretely, Some of the recent data from pilot programs in the Bay Area, in California, from Colorado, and from other states shows that the biggest reason for recidivism, which is people repeatedly ending up in the criminal justice system, is the lack of affordable housing and, as Pastor Willis said, the lack of living wage jobs.
So if we want to address these problems, then continuing to pump more and more millions of dollars into a solution that has not worked is still not going to work.
let's do something that has been proven to work, which is addressing the root causes of recidivism, which is the lack of affordable housing, the lack of community support, the lack of jobs, and the dollar should be allocated for programs that make sense, not programs that have failed over and over again.
Well, you want to expand tiny house villages.
Is that to say that these these programs may not be working?
Do you have any...
What programs may not be working?
The tiny house villages.
Do you have any solid numbers as to how many people have transitioned into permanent housing?
The programs are working.
In fact, I would invite Josh.
Why don't we have Lehigh themselves talk about what they've observed?
Great.
Do you have solid numbers?
Do you have solid numbers?
Over 500 people have transitioned into permanent housing from the tiny house villages in Seattle.
And they have much higher rates of exits to permanent housing compared to basic shelter, compared to enhanced shelter.
I believe it's over 40%, so we're very happy with the success numbers.
And we have neighbors and businesses that form community advisory committees that oversee the progress of the villages and meet monthly.
And the program is going very well.
We're getting people into permanent housing.
People are finding work.
They're getting the services that they need.
And they're going from homelessness to housing through these villages.
So it's an interim solution that I think works really well.
Correct, yeah.
What is your name and your title?
My name is Josh Castle.
I'm the Director of Community Engagement with Lehigh.
The figures that I mentioned, that's overall.
The program's been in place for about three and a half years now.
So with that, over 500 have transitioned into permanent housing.
I was just going to add to the very important data that Josh shared with us that these numbers are extraordinary if you compare them with the lack of this kind of evidence from virtually every other kind of thing and especially the sweeps which don't work at all and in fact I would really urge the members of the media to ask the mayor's office what numbers do they have for transitions to permanent housing from the sweeps of homeless people.
And I can tell you already the answer.
I can clear up the suspense.
There's no data, absolutely zero data.
And I have spent years asking the mayor's office through successive mayors, what is your evidence for continuing the sweeps?
And there's zero evidence to show that it actually transitions to permanent housing.