Washington continues to deal with the third-largest homeless population in the nation, and the problem is not getting better. Encampments are spreading into more communities, and crime in homeless camps is increasing, including murder, sexual assault, human trafficking and substance abuse. These camps create environmental hazards and are bad for public health and safety.
We need more affordable housing options, but the homelessness crisis goes much deeper than that. We have to address substance abuse and mental health disorders and provide people with the care they need to help them transition out of homelessness.
State and local governments spend billions of dollars every year on programs to provide housing and services to people in need. However, no tracking mechanism exists to determine if those efforts are effective. The truth is we don’t need a tracking mechanism to tell us they aren’t.
It’s not that Democratic lawmakers don’t want to solve the crisis. Their intentions are good and they want to help homeless people get off the streets. The problem is their solution is to continue throwing money into programs that have proven unsuccessful. The numbers don’t lie.
From 2022-24, the number of homeless individuals in Washington increased by 25 percent. Washington has the seventh-largest number of homeless individuals under the age of 18. The chronically unsheltered population in Washington has grown 531 percent over the past 10 years. More than 41,000 students experienced homelessness sometime during the 2023-24 school year. That’s a nearly 15 percent increase from the year before. The statistics go on and on.
So, what needs to change? We need to look at new alternatives to address the homelessness crisis. That’s why I introduced House Bill 1708. It would help local governments better track the impacts of homelessness and create more effective ways to address it. HB 1708 would direct the state to create a dashboard app for cities and counties to use at their discretion. It would also provide more transparency by allowing citizens to see where some money is going.
This legislation would make it possible for communities to examine homelessness more closely and see where to make changes. Having a dashboard would be a motivating factor in modifying behavior when we need to try something different.
Would having this dashboard solve the homelessness crisis? No, but it would be another effective tool leading to real solutions. The majority party chose not to hear it in committee. Why not? At the very least, it would have allowed us to discuss new ideas. We can’t keep doing the same things and expect a different outcome.
My colleague in the House Republican Caucus, Rep. Cyndy Jacobsen, introduced another bill (HB 1255) that would have paved the way for clearing dangerous encampments near sensitive locations, including schools, parks and child care centers.
The majority party said no to that bill as well. Instead, their answer to homelessness this session is House Bill 1380, which would create more problems than solutions. This vague legislation opens the door to unnecessary lawsuits against local jurisdictions. This is not the right answer.
I recognize we can’t solve the homelessness crisis in a day and there are many things to consider when addressing this issue. As the mayor of Washougal, I get a regular, up-close view of how homelessness affects my community. A dashboard would be another way to get a better look at this crisis and find ways to fix it.
How long have we been talking about fixing homelessness in the state? How much progress have we made? Throwing more money at unsuccessful programs will continue to get us the same results.
Maybe it’s time to try something new.
Rep. David Stuebe, R-Washougal, represents Washington’s 17th Legislative District. He also is mayor of Washougal.
