So did you ask them if they considered moving to a less expensive city where housing could be more affordable?

@1 - that's exactly what I was thinking.

Perhaps I misssed it somewhere in the story, or perhaps it wasn't covered: why are they trying to live someplace that's clearly beyond their means?

Struggling as they are to stay in Seattle would be reasonable if they had steady work in Seattle - it makes sense to live as close to work as possible, since any money saved by living more affordably outside the city would be eaten up by the costs and aggrivation of commutting. But picking up occasional landscaping work while while they “wait on that magical call” for subsidized housing in a city where it's in notoriously short supply hardly seems like a compelling reason to stay.

From the info provided, it seems like they're trying to live in Seattle for the sake of living in Seattle, versus moving someplace where they might be able to find more affordable housing - particularly if they're both living on the very limited incomes of public assistance, which is what it sounds like.

The housing crisis isn't unique to Seattle, but it seems like there must be a better option for them than trying to stick it out in one of the nations most expensive places to live.

This is so sad.
But the social security check would go a lot farther pretty most anyplace in the USA besides Seattle.....

@1, @2, @3 who's going to make your lattes and clean your toilets after you've run all the poor people out of town?

The OP quotes an Average Rent. Why not quote what their rent was before and after? Why is that nug left out. You know why, because $1,800 reads a lot bigger than what their rent probably was.

@4: The people, including even poorer people than they are, whom are in situations that enable them to live and work in Seattle. Next question?

Has anyone noticed that moving costs money? Gas, car breakdowns, etc. And when they get to that cheaper destination, are they magically going to have first, last and deposit appear, or are they going to be in the same boat as here, but with lower rent and less help from social services?

@4 - I make my own latte and clean my own toilet. It's part of the frugal lifestyle that helps me live in a place I can afford.

But to a larger issue you raise: we should jack our taxes high enough to pay our public sector workers enough so they can afford to live in the communities they serve. We should be paying Seattle teachers, firefighters, parks groundskeepers, transit workers, and others enough to live in Seattle. And I supported raising the minimum wage so that private sector service workers can make a living wage.

And if someone is homeless and needs public services like specialized healthcare that may be available in only Seattle, then we should focus our limited public housing programs on them.

But from what I read above, that doesn't apply here.

Joining the chorus, there are many, many cheaper cities than Seattle, some with less-burdened social services, and even a handful that could be reached with a single tank of gas.

@1 @2 @3 Did you guys miss the part where the article says she has been on the KING COUNTY Housing Authority waiting list for 6-7 years?

Yes, there are places where it costs less to live than KING COUNTY, but those places also have a dearth of services for disabled people. You did see the part where the article reported that she is disabled, right? And poorer, cheaper areas probably also have fewer people who will hire landscapers too, don't you think? Have you guys read any of the series of reports on the people on disability in the midwest and southern states, that WAPO have been doing for the last year? Take a look and try for some understanding, if not compassion.

@5 The rent amount they paid at the place they were EVICTED from, and the amount of the rent hike they couldn't afford that led to their EVICTION, are not pertinent to the fact that they can't find a place they can afford NOW. They need to find another place that was CHEAPER than the new rent after the hike. The article is saying there are no such place, and stated the average market price of an apartment in Seattle.

Do you have problems with reading comprehension? Are you a victim of the GOP Robber Barons' "Let's take all money from public schools and give it to private corporations, since only stupid, uneducated people and the greedy rich will vote for us" scams?

I agree with #4, these people just need to find jobs making his lattes or cleaning his toilets, and stop being unemployed.

Dignity in work, right?

@11: Well then, maybe we should evangelize that poor disabled people in your quintessential "fly-over states" to pull up stakes and head off to the Emerald City! Oh my!

This is superb reporting Heidi. Thank you.

@8: Precisely. By the time people hit the street, they have little to no money. Even if they had the gas money to drive to wherever is cheaper, they'd arrive without a permanent address and the funds to get an apartment. Plus, their fall in Seattle has probably left them with bad credit and no landlord reference. Nobody says "Wow, I'm down to my last $5000, guess I should break my lease and move to Spokane and start anew!", partly because they never have $5k in their hands at one time.

Sure, you can wag your finger and tut tut at whatever bad decisions has combined with bad luck to put a lot of homeless folks in that position, but we still have to figure out what to do with people that end up on the streets. Besides say "Shit! You should go back and time and not fuck everything up, loser!"

@14, this is not superb reporting. This is a basic article about public services and the plight of one couple. It's not compelling in any way. Your bar for "journalism" must be pretty low

they should head on out to Port Angeles where the cost of living is low, and apply to the Peninsula Housing Authority for a subsidized 1 br.

oh, wait. that won't work, either. the wait list is years-long there as well, and the PHA can barely afford it's maintenance budget, let alone capital investments that result in new units.

this crisis demands a massive federal response, but the GOP would rather pump 1/2 our taxes into the black hole of the DoD.

Why can't they save some of the money she gets from disability to move? Probably because the alcoholic drinks it all, contributing to their own strife like most homeless people.

@20: actually, that's the epitome of conventional, knee-jerk thinking.

some percentage of the homeless just aren't going to become productive members of society no matter how hard you judge them. they're simply incapable; they're broken, mentally &/or physically. any time walking among the homeless in pioneer square would tell you that.

this lady is disabled. she gets SSI. she should be able to live indoors somewhere.

@4: Where in the article did it say either of the subjects were cleaning toilets, making lattes, or doing any other steady work?

As other commenters have noted, there’s a difference between the working poor, and what this article describes. Unless I missed it, there is nothing keeping this couple here — job, family, anything. Why they’re trying to eke out an existence in our expensive city defies explanation.

Everyone complains about rats and mold. I love rats and mold. What's the address. Maybe I'll move there. I just need a parking space for my 4 SUV's.

"...there’s a difference between the working poor, and what this article describes."

And that difference, for the majority of the un-working poor, is that they are unable to work-- be it due to old age, poor health, poor mental health (see: health) or addiction (see: poor mental health).

They can't work in Seattle, and they can't work anywhere else, either. There are no market solutions for them, because they can't participate in the market-- not here in Seattle, and not anywhere else in the US.

To suggest they should all be run out of town by club-swingin' cops is pretty much on par with suggesting they should be stacked up and burned like rotten wood.

@26

Would you be OK with stacking 'em up and burning 'em?

It's so depressing that we don't see more creative alternatives in these debates, let's all try to work on that.

@25, @28: The only person suggesting police action or flat-out murder here is you.

“It's so depressing that we don't see more creative alternatives...”

The only creativity you’ve shown here is in accusing your fellow commenters of saying things we have not said.

Why don’t you give us your creative ideas for what this couple might do?

Social Security "Disability" is the new welfare.
Sit on the sofa, put on a hundred or two extra pounds, diabetes will soon follow, plus lugging that lard around on your belly will give you back problems.
Voila!
You too can get a check every month.

The cost of living in Mexico is very reasonable.

@30 - Please respond in the other thread we were both on. I look to you for sober leadership, and I am experiencing doubt because of where things left off. I am hoping you will have a different solution I can get behind. I know the thing with citations must have been a misunderstanding or something. Don’t leave me hanging!!

@30

I don't know, this couple seems to at least be getting through one day to the next on Seattle's streets.

Why is it so important to you that they be prevented from doing even that?

My preferred long-term solution for people who can't participate in the market is and always has been "public housing," on the many-dispersed-small-sites model, with no virtuous poors-only strings attached, and I'll happily vote for anyone pledging to take more taxes out of my pockets to pay for the land, labor, and materials.

You, however, are on record in favor of running the unworking poor out of town with a small army policemen-- or rather volunteer deputies, since you're the kind of mean little skinflint who won't cough up a penny of tax even for more cops.

@32: Well, if you're making American wages, sure. If you're making Mexican wages, not so much.

There is an astounding lack of humanity in most of these comments. Fact is, with a few bad breaks, ANY OF US could end up in this situation. As to the minimum wage, it HAD to be raised and that issue is settled-we all know that no one can survive in this town doing work that pays LESS than $15/hour. And we can't just reserve places like Seattle for the wealthy.

The smug heartlessness of most of these posts is beyond sickening. The fact is, with a handful of bad breaks, ANY of us could end up in this situation. No one here is so intrinsically superior or intrinsically virtuous or "responsible" that this couldn't happen to you. And as to leaving-the fact is there's no place in the entire country where the homeless from other towns are made welcome...it's impossible to leave a large city in a destitute situation and be given a second chance in a smaller town. Besides which, it's simply a sign of an arrogant sense of entitlement to want to reserve any large city for the wealthy.

The $15/hr fight(an issue which had nothing whatsoever to do with what this couple is going through) is settled, that wage is here to stay-and rightly so...it didn't kill jobs, it boosted the economy, and no one can either survive on wages smaller than that in Seattle OR have any chance to moce to a higher-paying job from a starting point of a job that pays less than $15/hour. That wage is the bare minimum a decent society could pay people, especially since post-1981 capitalism has essentially abolished upward mobility-the only people who are prosperous now are those born into prosperous families.

We're in this together. We can't just discard people; we can't just make the poor officially unwelcome.

And all the poor farms ever did was punish the poor for being poor(in an age where the economic model made mass poverty unavoidable. They didn't lift people out of poverty or give them the tools to lift themselves out of it-and being poor, in and of itself, should never have been treated as a disgrace or a crime.

@35: “I don't know, this couple seems to at least be getting through one day to the next on Seattle's streets.”

So this is what your self-described compassion really is: consigning people to a dead-end life of constant stress on Seattle’s streets, knowingly breaking laws and shuffling from back street to back street, with no job prospects, squandering their public-assistance income on basics in a very expensive city. (Did you catch the part where she had to discard insulin? How long do you believe it will be before her health really deteriorates?) This is what you really want for those among us who can’t participate in the market.

And you accuse me of wanting to be cruel to them!

39: no, you are being called cruel to them because you want to use coercive means(including possible arrest) on people like this...and because you assume you are entitled to pass judgment on them and act as if their situation proves your inherent superiority.

39: and it's a reasonable surmise that you support police action against these people because of the numerous posts you've made DEMANDING police action against the homeless, including your repeated calls for police sweeps of homeless encampments.

At times, you sound as though you're the last person west of Yakima who still think people can somehow "get their lives together" as a result of being locked in a cell.

Is there any reason, given that record and given your repeated expressions of anti-homeless rage, why the rest of us should believe you have any humane ideas about how to deal with homeless?

@40, @41: I have advocated we enforce our laws, so that we do not have a class of persons who live above them. Attack me for that all you like.

I never wrote that “coercive means” should be applied against this couple. If they keep stealing and parking illegally, they might indeed have legal trouble. That’s why I hope they leave town while they still can, and find a place where their meager income and still-working asset might be the basis of a decent life.

Anyone who advocates they stay here, in a place where they must steal to get by — and still forgo insulin!! — it is those persons who are being needlessly cruel to them.

@40, @41 - I am hereby giving you notice to stop commenting. You have inadequately responded to tensor’s points and misrepresented who is and is not cruel. This violates the code of conduct tensor requires of Slog commenters in regards to tensor comments. He clearly knows what is best for the people in the article, and we just need to respect his point of view.

44: I'm just commenting to respond to your comments by announcing with this comment that I will cease commenting. I'll need to come back, over a period of weeks, months, perhaps years, to make an indefinite number of closing comments clarifying my absolute commitment to your order that I stop commenting, and may need to post these comments in several different comment threads to make it my commitment to cease commenting known to all who comment on any article for which commenting is an option. Comments?

@44: If you have a problem with anything I wrote, please quote my statement(s), and tell me your objections.

I’m not responsible for what you “surmise” I believe, especially as you based this on your opinion of what I wrote, not upon anything I actually did write.

Finally, I’d like to know what you think this couple should do, right now, with the resources available to them. (Given her precarious medical state, awaiting future help may not be a viable option for her.)

@1 and @2 must be very callous, or Simply haven’t noticed that the affordable housing crisis is nationwide, except for a half dozen or so cities where someone who works 40 hours a week at a minimum wage job can afford an apartment.

I misspoke. The number of American cities where’s it’s possible to work at a minimum wage full time job and afford an apartment is zero.

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/28/8679889/minimum-wage-housing-map