The most obvious root cause of increased homelessness in Seattle is an increase in overall population and a larger economy . Without discounting any of the historical work the author has done, they need to establish a clearer causal relationship to the present.
Because the surrounding areas have essentially no services for the homeless and their police forces are far more hostile, Seattle acts as a regional magnet, even before other cities "dump" their homeless.
Expanding social services for the homeless within King County is likely to cause even more homeless to live there. Viewing the success or failure of a city's social services by the total number of homeless punishes cities with social services and incentivizes cities that are openly hostile.
Any non-regional solution to homelessness in Seattle is going to fail, because the more the center invests, the more the periphery offloads all the expenses onto it, over a broader and broader area. Decentralization of services for the homeless is far more sensible than trying to build a "master plan" that ignores the immediate root cause.
Most of the homeless population in Seattle is from elsewhere, and most of the newly homeless in the region go to Seattle. Linking the crisis to HUD cuts in the 1980s is no doubt a correct systemic explanation, but does not tell us why the homeless population in Seattle is growing so rapidly.
It's a bit like a history Ottoman Empire's failure to modernize in an article about the declining percentage of college graduates among arab males living in Europe from 2006-2016. Of course it can still be a contributing factor, but it completely ignores the millions of refugees that arrived in the last year.
Because the surrounding areas have essentially no services for the homeless and their police forces are far more hostile, Seattle acts as a regional magnet, even before other cities "dump" their homeless.
Expanding social services for the homeless within King County is likely to cause even more homeless to live there. Viewing the success or failure of a city's social services by the total number of homeless punishes cities with social services and incentivizes cities that are openly hostile.
Any non-regional solution to homelessness in Seattle is going to fail, because the more the center invests, the more the periphery offloads all the expenses onto it, over a broader and broader area. Decentralization of services for the homeless is far more sensible than trying to build a "master plan" that ignores the immediate root cause.
Most of the homeless population in Seattle is from elsewhere, and most of the newly homeless in the region go to Seattle. Linking the crisis to HUD cuts in the 1980s is no doubt a correct systemic explanation, but does not tell us why the homeless population in Seattle is growing so rapidly.
It's a bit like a history Ottoman Empire's failure to modernize in an article about the declining percentage of college graduates among arab males living in Europe from 2006-2016. Of course it can still be a contributing factor, but it completely ignores the millions of refugees that arrived in the last year.