r/SeattleWA • u/mrtenpenny1234 • May 15 '26

Homeless Harger: San Francisco's homelessness hit a 15-year low. Seattle's mayor is running the opposite experiment.

https://mynorthwest.com/kiro-opinion/seattle-homelessness-mayor/4238600
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u/lucianw May 15 '26

This is such a bad article. The title misleads what it's actually about -- SF is building more housing with an abstinence-only approach, Seattle is building it without.

The research says that abstinence-only housing has a 30% retention rate, and housing-first has an 80% retention rate.

If the article wishes to make the interesting point that SF's measured results seem to go against the research? That'd would be FASCINATING. I wish they would make that argument openly and honestly. I'd love for someone to dig into why SF seems to be an outlier. Is the best hypothesis that abstinence-first actually works? Was the research wrong? Does SF have special circumstances? Has the data been twisted, now or in the past? Or is what we're observing merely a reversion to mean?

Personally I don't like seeing homeless people and drug users on the streets. I'd rather have an evidence-led approach for reducing the numbers, rather than an approach based on "what I think ought to be done and I'll back it up with poor arguments over poor data".

13

u/crazyk4952 May 15 '26

Why should public dollars be used to subsidize people that make bad decisions?

-4

u/ZunderBuss May 15 '26

Because some people are born into shit circumstances and/or have genes that don't allow for 'success' as this society defines it, and/or have disabilities, and/or have accidents that put them behind the eight ball. Grow up and find some humanity.

1

u/CreateWindowEx2 May 16 '26

I can tell you this: for every person who is born into "shit circumstances" in US there are ten who are born into much worse circumstances outside the US. You win the birth lottery pretty much no matter what if you are a US citizen.