I’ve spent years working directly with Seattle’s homeless population, not studying them from university offices, or analyzing data sets from a comfortable distance, but on the streets, in the encampments, doing street-level engagement and intervention. When I read yet another opinion piece (“Homelessness in Seattle: We can’t unsee it,” Dec. 28, 2025) attributing our homelessness crisis primarily to housing costs, I have to ask: Are we really going to continue trusting consultants and researchers over what our own eyes tell us?
The December piece by Walter Hatch follows a familiar pattern in academia: Start with a conclusion, in this case, that “it’s a housing problem,” then find data to support it. However, those of us working on the ground are aware of a critical fact that these analyses consistently overlook: There’s a fundamental distinction between the “crisis population” living in visible squalor on our streets and individuals who are the working poor — couch-surfing, living with family or struggling with roommates to afford rent.
We cannot conflate these populations. They are not the same.
Walk through any encampment in Seattle. What you see is not a collection of people who simply can’t afford first and last month’s rent. What you see, what we all see, is the devastating evidence of severe mental health crises and, far more commonly, active drug addiction. The refuse, the chaos, is not created by economic hardship. This is the visible manifestation of untreated addiction and serious psychiatric illness.
Here’s what I know from doing this work: People who are temporarily down on their luck do not live like this. They are not collecting their belongings from dumpsters and street corners. They are not stealing to feed their addiction. And crucially, they accept housing when it’s offered and move on with their lives. I’ve seen it happen countless times. These individuals exist, but they are not the ones creating the humanitarian crisis that is intrinsically tied to the crime we see on our streets today.
Hatch and others argue that the people in these encampments simply need housing. But this fundamentally misunderstands the crisis. The Seattle Times has reported extensively on how affordable housing units sit vacant — thousands of them, because the people living in encampments cannot or will not move into them without addressing their underlying issues first. This means going to treatment for their substance use or mental health condition, then entering recovery housing while also working on job navigation to ultimately reach self-sufficiency.
When market-rate apartments now cost roughly the same as “affordable” housing, and occupancy rates in affordable units hover around 60%, we have clear evidence that lack of available housing is not the primary barrier.
The housing-first model operates on the belief that providing shelter with wraparound services gives people battling addiction and mental illness the best chance at recovery. However, what advocates fail to acknowledge is a critical flaw: these services are not mandatory. Residents receive free housing with no requirement to engage in treatment, effectively trapping them in cycles of addiction rather than breaking them.
The reality is stark: It’s nearly impossible to get clean and sober when the fox is guarding the henhouse. When housing programs place people with diverse and severe disabilities under one roof, including people actively using drugs, their dealers, and codependent using partners, the environment becomes toxic to recovery. Your drug dealer may live down the hall. Your using buddy is your next-door neighbor. The very people and behaviors you need to escape to heal are now your permanent roommates.
This explains why we don’t see better outcomes despite well-intentioned efforts and significant investment. Congregate housing models for this population, without mandatory treatment requirements, re-create the dysfunction of encampments indoors. Recovery requires separation from triggers, accountability and structure, none of which these arrangements provide.
Perhaps instead of housing-first, an options-first approach represents the necessary compromise as policymakers consider fund distribution. This model would offer multiple pathways: housing with mandatory treatment for those ready to commit, stand-alone treatment programs and traditional low-barrier housing for those who refuse services. By acknowledging that one size doesn’t fit all and that housing alone cannot solve addiction, we might finally see the outcomes our most vulnerable populations desperately need and our communities deserve.
