Tonight, hundreds of thousands of Americans with no other place to go will do their best to get some sleep wherever they can – in cars, tents, and city parks across the country. Hundreds more will become homeless tomorrow as the cost of food and housing in the U.S. continues to climb beyond what many can afford. 

This is a crisis that we should not, and cannot, tolerate as a country. Fortunately, we don’t have to – we already know how to prevent people from losing their homes and how to get those who are already homeless back into stable housing. As the CEO of a nonprofit providing both homelessness prevention services and permanent housing with supportive services, I’ve seen firsthand how lives are changed every day when we apply the right resources and support in the right way. 

But instead of funding these solutions at the scale we need, there are those who want to do something that we know does nothing to address homelessness: make life even harder for people experiencing it. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor, finding that local governments are free under the Constitution to fine and jail people who sleep in public places even if they have nowhere else to go at night. 

Does it even need to be said that punishing those who have the least  – for merely existing  – is both wrong and counterproductive?  

My colleagues who work directly with people living on the streets will tell you that the kinds of laws allowed under the Supreme Court decision are both harmful and wasteful, making it even more difficult for people to create stability in their lives after becoming homeless. And many residents of our housing programs will testify to the humiliation and trauma of losing their few possessions and only home to anti-camping enforcement in Seattle and elsewhere. 

Laws that criminalize homelessness are built on the mistaken belief that people choose to be homeless – that they willingly forego the safety, comfort, and stability of a home to expose themselves to the inhumane and traumatic experiences of life on the streets. This is simply not true. More importantly, it completely ignores the systemic issues – especially the cost of housing – that have led to widespread homelessness in our community and across the country. 

Homelessness is one of those societal problems that is too often left to law enforcement agencies that are ill-equipped to handle it. In a perfect world, the first call isn’t to the police – it’s to organizations that can help people in need. 

“Laws that criminalize homelessness are built on the mistaken belief that people choose to be homeless – that they willingly forego the safety, comfort, and stability of a home to expose themselves to the inhumane and traumatic experiences of life on the streets. This is simply not true.”

~Shalimar Gonzales, Solid Ground CEO

The truth is that many of us are closer to homelessness than we like to believe. When Solid Ground conducted our Community Needs Assessment two years ago, one out of three people who responded said they would be in financial crisis if they had just $500 in unexpected expenses. The U.S. Census Bureau similarly estimates that nearly one in three residents in the greater Seattle area are behind on their rent or mortgage payments and facing possible eviction or foreclosure. 

Already, more than 16,300 people in King County are homeless on any given night, according to the last count by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. That’s up 23% from just two years ago.  

If we want to keep that number from growing, we must deepen investments in the programs proven to prevent and resolve homelessness instead of penalizing people experiencing it and further exacerbating our crisis. Local governments need to focus on quickly housing people living outside. At Solid Ground, we know this because we are in the field every day supporting and advocating for local governments to house people directly from encampments and safely close those sites. 

The Supreme Court decision will likely embolden local governments across the country to pass more backwards homelessness policies. But our region can choose, and must choose, to do better.  

In Seattle, you can support real solutions to homelessness in our community by calling on your city councilmember to fully fund human services – including inflation adjustments for all contracts to keep up with rising costs of providing services – and to invest in the workforce that we all rely on to care for our communities and tackle our homelessness crisis. And at the state level, you can join the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance in demanding that state lawmakers take concrete steps to address the root causes of homelessness. 

Even those in favor of anti-camping laws acknowledge that we will never prosecute our way out of our housing and homelessness crisis. But I believe we can create a community where everyone is housed, simply by investing in the programs that work and addressing the root causes that got us here in the first place.

So let’s make it happen.

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Image at top: An aerial view of Solid Ground’s Sand Point Housing, home to more than 400 adults and children building new lives after experiences with homelessness.