President Jimmy rang the bell promptly at 12:30 for Rotarians attending in the Cascade Ballroom at Westin for the in-person meeting and those attending via Zoom. He introduced Don Murphy accompanied by Freeman Fong for The Star-Spangled Banner, followed by Trish Bostrom with the day’s inspiration.
The short program featured Kathy Williams and her team – Kirk Greene, Karl Ege, and Matt Albertson describing how members can support the Seattle Rotary Service Foundation’s Legacy Giving Campaign. “Rotarians inspire hope today and tomorrow, and for more than 100 years our club has inspired hope through the Seattle Rotary Service Foundation,” Kathy said. “With your participation, you become a member of the Legacy Society, and through the legacy giving program we can be sure SRSF can respond to the needs of the time.” The Legacy Giving team asked each Rotarian to include SRSF in their estate plan. Rotarians were encouraged to talk to their legal or financial adviser to set up a legacy gift. More than 30 Seattle Rotarians have already joined the Legacy Society.
Program chair, David Fain introduced UW Homelessness Initiative co-chair Gregg Colburn, assistant professor of real estate at the UW School of Built Environments, to interpret his work describing factors contributing to long-term homelessness. “I am in close contact with leaders in Seattle and the problem of homelessness is not being diagnosed properly – homelessness is a housing problem,” he began. He described how the causation of homelessness is defined by addiction, poverty, mental health, and other factors that are not proper causes of homelessness. “A person’s problem(s) no doubt contributes to homelessness, but why do rates of homelessness vary from city to city and what drives the variation?” he asked.
“Seattle has five times as many homeless people than Chicago, as tight housing markets accentuate vulnerabilities.” His point is that risk factors have little to do with homelessness. Big variations in homelessness around the U.S. in cities and counties come from a lack of affordable housing.
Why does the variation exist? The most impoverished city in the U.S. is Detroit, yet it has the lowest homeless rate in the U.S. “There’s no relationship between addiction, mental health, weather or local context and homelessness,” he continued, “and generosity of benefits in cities and counties has zero relationships to homelessness.”
All big cities believe they are a magnet for homelessness, he says, but they are not. His program sampled 30 cities around the U.S. -- most all have Democratic Mayors…yet Chicago has fewer homeless than Seattle.
“Where rents are high homelessness is high. When vacancy rates are low, and rents are high homelessness is high,” he concluded. “Coastal cities with high rents have more homelessness. We have not built enough affordable housing.
Homelessness is not a crisis in the rust belt. Housing starts in Charlottesville and Phoenix are high while homeless rates are low. “One shining example of homeless prevention is how we deal with veterans and homelessness,” he said. “We provided affordable housing assistance that should be expanded to the general population. We should continue operating investments to those in need, but capital investments in housing units are a moral obligation.”
He ended his remarks by asserting how cities and counties need help from the Federal government. Make housing vouchers an entitlement ($60-$100B), local commitment to the development of affordable housing (10B over the next ten years). “The only way to deal with a structural problem,” he said, “is a structural solution.
