Does Houston hold the answers to Spokane's homeless crisis?
According to a new video series hosted by Gavin Cooley, Spokane's former chief financial officer, the answer is: maybe.
The six-part series, called "Housing & Help," is funded by the Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium. In the two, slickly produced episodes released so far, Cooley interviews an Eastern Washington University professor of social work and residents at Camp Hope, a 600-person homeless encampment in the East Central neighborhood, on land where houses were razed over the past two decades to make way for the north-south freeway's interchange with I-90.
In later episodes, Cooley pivots away from the roots of the problem and visits Houston to learn from the city's success and see what might work for Spokane.
Ben Stuckart, the executive director of the Low Income Housing Consortium and former city council president, started developing the idea for the series about a year ago. He's been working on local homeless issues for several years now, including during his time at City Hall, and says he's been frustrated by discussions that just keep going in circles. The video series, he hopes, will cut through the political jockeying, start a conversation and humanize the people at the center of the issue.
"In these arguments it becomes 'left' and 'right,'" Stuckart says. "You lose track of the fact that these are actual community members of ours that are on the streets and dying."
Homelessness, in other words, shouldn't be a political issue. That's why Stuckart chose Cooley as host. Cooley spent 18 years as the city's CFO and served under five mayors, including the liberal Mary Verner and the conservative Jim West. He's well-liked in the community and seen as politically neutral, Stuckart says.
Cooley, who writes an occasional freelance opinion column for the Inlander and hosts the video series with a Rick Steves-esque curiosity, knows a lot about budgets, but acknowledges being a novice when it comes to homeless issues. That was kind of the point, Cooley says.
"I'm along for the journey every bit as much as every single person who might see one of these episodes," Cooley says.
WHY HOUSTON?
Houston is an outlier in America. Over the past decade, the nation's fourth-largest city has managed to reduce its homeless population by 63 percent and move more than 25,000 people off the street and into apartments and houses. It's a huge achievement that quickly caught the attention of the team behind "Housing & Help."
"Everything [was] leading to Houston," says Frank Swoboda, president of Spokane's Corner Booth Media, which produced the series.
There's a lot of national interest in Houston's approach to homlessness and how it might be applied to other cities. A TikTok video of Cooley talking about the city's homeless response went viral, and Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward has spoken to her Houston counterpart about a potential trip in the near future.
Houston's achievement, Cooley says, comes down to the city's ability to unite various entities and service providers and get them rowing in the same direction.
Houston, like Spokane, has a strong mayor form of government. Houston's mayor has used that executive power to bring the various entities together (with some initial resistance) and unite them under a single coalition.
Spokane hasn't done that.
"It's kind of a mess right now," Cooley says. "Nobody is really communicating and working collaboratively."
Another big takeaway from Houston, Cooley says, is that the cost of not addressing homelessness is actually higher than the cost of doing something. Estimates vary, but leaders in Houston told Cooley that a single person living on the streets costs the city up to $96,000 a year, while a year of housing and wraparound services costs closer to $17,000.
ONE SUPER AGENCY
Cooley says Spokane has what it takes to copy Houston's approach — it's just a matter of leadership.
Stuckart, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor against Woodward in 2019, describes Spokane's homelessness response as being pulled in different directions by eight entities all fighting for funding. He's talking about the City Council, city administration, county commissioners, the city's Continuum of Care services, and its Community, Housing and Human Services department, philanthropic organizations, business organizations, and the county's Community Development Board.
"None of them are on the same page," Stuckart says.
To follow Houston's model, Stuckart says those entities would need to form one super agency, pool their money and give that agency sole authority for addressing the crisis. The organization would be run by experts who would make decisions on what to do with the money, Stuckart says.
Houston's approach to homelessness isn't without its critics, and Stuckart and Cooley acknowledge that the city doesn't hold all the answers. Home prices in Houston are also lower than in Spokane.
Still, the team behind "Housing & Help" (housingandhelp.org) think Spokane can learn from Houston, and hope the series will inspire people to take collaboration seriously.
Such collaboration, at least at this point, seems distant. In recent weeks, Spokane leaders and nonprofits have clashed over planned supportive housing in the West Hills, the legal status of Camp Hope and how to legally enforce the city's sit-lie ordinance. As furious public meetings and threats of lawsuits escalate, 1,757 people (a likely undercount) continue to live on the streets.
"Right now, everybody's frustrated. Nobody's coming together," Cooley says.
He's optimistic but acknowledges the effort it will take to get Spokane to work together. The city is at a turning point, he says, and the time for action is now. ♦
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was updated Sept. 23, 2022 to correct the estimated figure given by Houston officials for a year of housing and wraparound services. It is $17,000.
