Steinbrueck argues that housing is a fundamental human right--a concept that's straight out of the progressive handbook. "I want to give my colleagues and the city the opportunity to say, 'Yes, human lives are important,'" he says. So, he's going to bat for the neediest people this budget season--Seattle's 3,000-per-night homeless population. According to his "Homeless Strategic Response" budget proposal, he intends to "demonstrate that Seattle is furthering efforts to be a caring, compassionate city that is seriously committed to work towards reducing and ending homelessness." His plan would direct the city to spend $12 million on transitional housing, shelters, rental assistance, and "public awareness of homelessness"--twice what the mayor proposed for reducing homelessness.
Of course advocates publicly profess their support for Steinbrueck's plan. Obviously, they don't want to lose their alliance with an outspoken, popular city official like Steinbrueck. However, while they support him publicly, privately they're afraid Steinbrueck's proposal will fail them in two ways. First, his idealistic proposal could jeopardize the credibility of housing advocates' struggle for funding. (In fact, if tax-cut measure I-722 passes next week, the council will be looking to cut the budget, and Steinbrueck's proposal will be even more of a pipe dream.) Second, losing credibility ultimately undermines advocates' ability to be taken seriously by the council--threatening their leverage to get any funding requests passed.
So, advocates are frantically coming up with their own bite-sized budget proposals (like $650,000 for hygiene centers where the poor can wash up) as a backup to Steinbrueck's grandiose platform. Basically, they don't want Steinbrueck's liberal grandstanding to cost them an actual victory.
"Advocates felt that there weren't the votes for [Steinbrueck's $12 million]," says Carla Okigwe, executive director of a leading nonprofit organization, the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County. She's been polling Steinbrueck's colleagues on the council to see if they support his proposal. So far, it doesn't look good. According to Steinbrueck's office, the $12 million proposal only has possible yes votes from (surprise!) lefty pals Judy Nicastro and Nick Licata. Tellingly, in a conversation with The Stranger, Council Member Heidi Wills--who represents the council's mainstream block--didn't show much enthusiasm but for Steinbrueck's plan.
Okigwe met with a Steinbrueck staffer on Monday, October 30 to impress upon him that "there may be a better approach." She wants the city to fund existing projects with plausible amounts of money. For instance, she asked the city council to increase funding from $80,000 to $200,000 for home-buyer training for low-income people.
"He could be more effective when he takes these stands," says John Fox, head of the Seattle Displacement Coalition. Fox, one of Seattle's leading housing advocates, recognizes that other council members aren't on the same page as Steinbrueck. And since they aren't, Fox stops short of expecting a revolution. For his part, he's pressing the council to pass a more practical proposal--$200,000 to fix up the crappy publicly-owned Morrison apartments.
To be fair, Steinbrueck's pushing has done some good. He prompted Mayor Paul Schell to throw bones to the poor in his September 25 budget proposal, like keeping the shelter beds in City Hall available year-round rather than just in the winter.
Steinbrueck says he absolutely isn't grandstanding. He believes that criticism of the proposal is coming from "people who don't know how it works around here." He adds, "I have been carefully working with my colleagues since last summer... and have come up with a sound plan.... I'm serious about it. It's not a flaky, out-of-the-hat kind of thing."
It's great that Steinbrueck is adamantly advocating on behalf of an invisible constituency. It's something that lesser politicians don't begin to bother with. However, no matter how sincere Steinbrueck is about wanting to boost Seattle's homeless services, his proposal isn't likely to pass. Steinbrueck concedes, "politically, it's very challenging to get support for this."
But Steinbrueck believes now's the time. "We've got glamour projects going up all over," he says. "So I didn't want to be totally practical and compromising here." Unfortunately, being impractical isn't a luxury that homeless activists have at their disposal. While Steinbrueck is worried that criticism from advocates will weaken city council support for his proposal, advocates are worried that his extravagant demands will undermine the credibility of their cause.
