Unfortunately, our first obstacle to tackling this problem comes from what we call it: homelessness. While that word seems like the most obvious descriptor for the growing number of people living on sidewalks, in squalid tent cities, and beneath freeway overpasses, it’s inadequate.

It is a terrible thing to be without a home — without shelter. But if lack of housing were the actual root or extent of the problem, it should have been erased, or at the very least reduced, by 10-plus years and many billions of dollars spent on “Housing First” policies in our state and nation. That was the unreserved promise of those who pushed the idea. 

Instead, the number of homeless Americans began increasing dramatically after the Obama administration implemented Housing First in 2013, even in the five years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic, and despite a near-doubling in the amount of money spent each year.

Why did it fail? In short, because Housing First could better be described as “Housing Only”: It supplanted a more effective and balanced approach that acknowledged the obvious contributing and causal issues of mental illness, drug addiction, and domestic violence. Before 2013, public dollars were spread between emergency intervention, housing, and long-term treatment and follow-up services. After 2013, many of these essential pre- and post-services were eliminated.

Further, the Housing First policies removed (by design) all expectations (now referred to as “barriers”) that recipients pursue sobriety, meet reasonable standards and goals toward recovery, and participate in appropriate and meaningful work — each of which is an essential ingredient to human dignity. Programs that incorporated such elements were defunded; many providers removed them to get or keep public dollars.

Housing First was and still is justified by the false idea, echoed by our own state’s Advisory Council on Homelessness in the cover letter for its 2024–2029 Homeless Housing Strategic Plan: “The main reason people in our state are experiencing homelessness is due to a lack of housing available to those making the lowest incomes. … While other issues such as mental illness, substance use disorder, and domestic violence can exacerbate the problem and make it harder to find and maintain housing, basic economics are driving the problem.”

This is just plain false, foolish, and even nefarious. Housing First has been a catastrophic failure, measured not just in the colossal waste of hard-earned taxpayer dollars, but in untold despair, suffering, and death of the very people it intended to help. For firsthand accounts and journalism that show the cost of this policy in lives here in Washington, look up the work of Ginny Burton and Jonathan Choe.

Why does the state continue Housing First policies?

It’s hard to believe any rational person can look at the data, or even walk down a street in downtown Seattle or Spokane, or past Colville’s recently-shuttered tent encampment, and still pretend our current homelessness policies are working. Yet many state officials are doubling down, claiming the obvious failures are the result of not spending enough. They demand more money and more housing units, repeating the promises that have already been broken. (For an exact parallel, see claims about public education spending and results.)

This is why I used the word nefarious. Quite simply, public housing programs are big money. While it’s never safe to make assumptions about any person’s motives, and there are many people who serve honorably, it is fair to acknowledge the power of money to influence human action. An entire industry has been created — and flooded with many billions of public dollars — to build and operate housing units for the homeless.

An Aug. 26 Seattle Times article titled “King County Audit finds unapproved payments, possible fraud,” reports the staggering fact that the state’s “DCHS [Department of Community and Human Services] grant disbursal increased a whopping 6,700% in six years: In 2019-2020, DCHS gave out $22 million in grants. In 2024-25 it gave out $1.5 billion in grants.” It should surprise no one that so much money being spent so rapidly attracts bad actors.

Unfortunately, even those honestly applying Housing First policies will have a hard time getting good results. No amount of money can turn a bad idea into a good one. With a ban on requirements for sobriety and work participation, and a reduction in funding for meaningful intervention and treatment, many Housing First facilities are more a house of horror than a home. 

Washington’s Ginny Burton, founder of a recovery organization called O-UT, whose own story speaks profoundly to the power of intervention and treatment, describes our state’s Housing First complexes as essentially moving the degradation of the streets into a building. Her documentary series titled “Behind Closed Doors” chronicles the rampant drug abuse, isolation and loneliness, despair, violence, terror, and death that define life for too many in these places.

Hope for improving the Stevens County homelessness plan

Unfortunately, Stevens County’s own 5-Year Homelessness Plan (2025–2030), adopted officially on Aug. 12, reflects the failed Housing First model. This philosophy has been mandated by state officials and pushed down to counties by the state Department of Commerce for the last decade and more.

Hopefully that’s all about to change. Our commissioners and many who serve the needy in Stevens County acknowledge the need for a better approach and are willing to consider amendments to the plan to implement more effective solutions.

Help is also coming from the federal government. 

Executive order changes direction of federal dollars

President Trump signed an executive order on July 24 this year that will dramatically change the way federal dollars are spent to address homelessness. In particular, the order requires an end to funds for Housing First policies (including the related “harm reduction” and “safe consumption” policies) and does four important things:

1. Reintroduces meaningful civil commitment laws for the protection of self or others;
   
   
2. Requires enforcement of public safety laws against open illicit drug use, public camping, loitering and squatting, and bolsters enforcement for sex offender notification and evaluation;
   
   
3. Reinvests in crisis intervention and long-term treatment programs for addiction and mental illness; and
   
   
4. Requires results-based accountability for programs and participants.
   
   

This is an excellent opportunity for Stevens County to pursue truly effective and compassionate homelessness and recovery programs, for the benefit of those who need them most and for the hard-working citizens who support them.

Many programs are working

If you’d like to learn about some programs that will make your heart sing, look up Community First! Village (Austin, TX) and the Good Neighbor Village (Pierce County, WA); Battlefield Addiction (WA); O-UT (WA); the Delancey Street Foundation (San Francisco, CA); the Pallet Company and Weld (Everett, WA); the Union Gospel Mission (Spokane and Seattle); the Citygate Network (nationwide); Teen Challenge (nationwide); and Haven for Hope (San Antonio, TX).

Lives are being changed and redeemed; people are gaining self-sufficiency after years of dependency; chains of addiction and violence are being broken. How? By love, genuine compassion (the act of suffering with others), and a lot of long, hard, patient, effective work.

No one is beyond hope. Our state and county policies should reflect that truth and give people the best chance possible; at the very least, they should never hinder those chances as they currently do.

Marsha Michaelis lives in Kettle Falls. She is a research fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty. The opinions expressed in this article are hers alone.

Discovery Institute

As a non-profit, non-partisan institute, Discovery is best known for its work in the field of science: Over the last 30 years, its team of scholars and scientists from around the world has successfully challenged the dogmas of materialism and Darwinian evolution, publishing a vast body of work demonstrating that life and the universe are better explained by an intelligent designer. An annual education event organized by Discovery in Spokane has drawn 500-700 junior high and high school students each of the last three years.

The Discovery Institute also undertakes essential work in various other areas, including economics, bioethics, technology, education, transportation, civic leadership, and the intersection of religion and public life. The Institute’s Fix Homelessness initiative seeks to offer practical and compassionate solutions to the crisis of homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction.

To learn more, visit: discovery.org and fixhomelessness.org.