The Struggles of West Coast Cities, Take Two
I push back at some reader theories about why some cities in the West are a mess.
Thanks to readers for your thoughtful reaction to my essay exploring why West Coast cities run by Democrats aren’t doing as well as East Coast cities run by Democrats, in areas such as homelessness, public safety and education. I asked for your comments on why this is the case (or, alternatively, why you think my premise is wrong), and the result was a deluge of 220 responses.
I found it a very useful, thoughtful and mostly civil discussion, so thanks to all. But let me provoke further by pushing back at a couple of common explanations I heard for the problems here in the West:
It’s the weather! A number of you noted that winters are milder on the West Coast than in the Northeast and suggested that that’s the reason for the greater homelessness in the West. Count me skeptical: I hear that reasoning a lot, but I think it’s too easy for us in the Northwest to use that as an excuse for our failed policies.
The mild weather probably is a significant factor for increased homelessness in San Diego and Los Angeles, but I think we’re inclined to overstate its significance in the Pacific Northwest. Portland, for example, is the third rainiest city in America, averaging 164 days of rain annually. Seattle gets 150 days of rain. Do we really think that people who lack homes are eager to move to cities where it rains so much?
There are lots of cities around the country that are run by Democrats that have much more hospitable weather than Portland or Seattle but don’t have the same housing crises: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Chapel Hill, Charlottesville, Richmond, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Richmond, Washington and so on.
Another reason I’m inclined to think that homelessness is policy driven, not weather driven, is that some places in the West have managed to address the problem and reduce chronic homelessness. Kern County, California, is a good example.
It’s all about Reagan, national policy and a lack of local options! I don’t buy this either. It’s true that President Reagan cut funding for housing programs, and likewise true that if one locality provides excellent services for the homeless it will attract some people from other areas that offer fewer services. But again, I think it’s too easy to lean on this as an excuse for poor local governance.
Consider Houston and Dallas. Both are Democratic cities that tried to address homelessness. But good intentions are not enough: Homelessness soared in Dallas, but dropped by half in Houston. And people from Dallas didn’t rush to Houston in ways that caused its program to fail.
Even within cities, we’ve sometimes seem programs that are successful in one neighborhood (for example, in the Times Square area of New York City) even as other neighborhoods struggle a few miles away.
So while national policy matters, some localities have managed to register real progress on homelessness. And the West Coast hasn’t.
Homelessness is all about people wanting to live on the West Coast and driving up prices. There’s something to this — but only something. The bigger problem in the West has been the failure to build enough housing: Oregon, for example, is short about 140,000 housing units. Over the last couple of decades in much of the West, only about half as many housing units have been built as are needed, and of course that drives up housing costs and leaves many unhoused.
West Virginia has a severe addiction/mental health problem, but one reason it doesn’t have as much homelessness as Western states is that you can rent an apartment in West Virginia for $600 a month. If you could do that in San Francisco or Portland or Seattle, there’d be less homelessness.
Why hasn’t the West built more housing? That has a lot to do with Western NIMBYism and zoning laws, as a fine new book by Jenny Schuetz of the Brookings Institution notes. There has also been a huge migration to some sun belt cities — Atlanta, Austin and various Florida cities — but those cities have done a better job building more housing to accommodate the influx. To their credit, Oregon and California have relaxed single family zoning rules, and that may help.
So I’m skeptical of those three explanations that some folks offered for elevated homelessness in the West. Or rather, I think they may play some role, but I fear that we sometimes use them as a crutch to avoid a tough-minded analysis of our own policy failures. And in any case, they don’t explain the West’s poor performance in education or public safety.
There are other explanations that people offered that I do think partially explain some of our difficulties. These include a greater ideological purity on the West Coast, addiction/meth issues, less focus on outcomes, and referendums that gutted tax support for public education. And problems interact and cascade: Oregon ranks No. 1 among states in illicit drug use and No. 50 in people who need drug treatment but don’t get it, and the upshot is obviously going to be an impact on public safety, on education, on homelessness.
I don’t buy the argument from some conservatives that the problem is just Democrats or liberalism, for as I noted in the last essay, blue states overall have better policy outcomes (life expectancy, poverty, etc.) than red states. And the gaps between blue states and red states in outcomes are widening, which to me signals that Democrats overall got crucial policy decisions right.
It’s hard for liberals to talk about some of our policy failures, but this is a conversation we have to have — both to win voters and to improve outcomes for ordinary citizens. The metric of progressivism has to be actual progress in living conditions. So thanks for engaging in this difficult conversation, and feel free to push back at my take. I welcome your thoughts.
Beginning in the l970's with de-institutionalization, we developed the idea that treatment for mental illness and/or drug and alcohol addiction must be voluntary, i.e., the person experiencing these problems must WANT to undergo treatment and must seek it out voluntarily. But in my 30+ years as a social worker, I learned that many people are either unwilling or unable to seek help on their own. The prospect of change is too frightening; it's easier just to numb it down and continue on. And in Portland, we eliminated the types of housing where such troubled folks could at least afford a room with a lock on the door--the old SRO hotels like the Danmoore, the Hamilton, the Kenton, etc. So they gradually began to take up residence on our streets, and we began to normalize their behavior, calling it "compassion" when it's actually indifference. We convinced ourselves that we had no right to intervene in their lives, so what else could we do? We began to see the problem as intractable. I think we need to re-examine the policy of public intervention and, if necessary, civil commitment to appropriate treatment facilities. Of course, we no longer HAVE appropriate treatment facilities, but we can create them if we have the political will to do so. I'm certainly not advocating a return to long-term institutionalization, but I do not think people have a "right" to live on our streets, psychotic, violent, drug-using. They need medical treatment and basic care as much as people who suffer heart attacks or strokes. They may initially need to be forced into it. I know this strikes many people here in the Pacific Northwest as draconian. I used to believe that if we just offered enough support, people would want to get help. But I learned over the years, painfully at times, that this simply isn't true. Our non-intervention policy has failed and has even made the problem worse.
I tend to think that it is "all of the above"
1. Yes, I do think our mild climate has something to do with it - in the east of the Mississippi it gets WAY hot in the summer (and humid) and in the midwest and east coast it also gets bloody cold in the winter. Here, we have a week or two of super hot or super cold weather, but not as unliveable as elsewhere. So maybe not "the" reason, but it doesn't hurt.
2. We've had an influx of upper income people who can afford high rent (and rents in Seattle a few years ago went up by $650, $700 $850 PER MONTH in a whack).. Many also came from places where real estate was more expensive (California, I'm looking at you), and it allowed them to purchase without dickering and it's pushed up housing prices at all levels. I will never forget the 80 some year old lady standing in my checkout line with tears in her eyes - her rent was the one that went up $850 a month - and she asked me where she was going to go... I had no answer. Another of my customers was the one where rent went up $700... last I saw her she was living in her car, and she worked two jobs in the medical field. Uncontrolled rent increases forced some out. We may not see them in tents, but they are couch surfing or living in their car or paying for motels once a week to get showers... we really do not see all the misery of homelessness.
3. We have a huge addiction problem and mental health problems and do not have the infrastructure to deal with that. I don't know that ours is "worse" than anywhere else, but we seem to be unable or unwilling to expend the funds to deal with it, and Seattle SHOULD have the budget.
4. The cost of building low income - a few years ago I read a story that building low income housing was costing more than regular housing. Partly because the need for low income housing is greatest in the city limits where property is also more expensive... but it seems to me that there was more to it. Low income housing shouldn't cost "more" than other housing. Seattle is taking to purchasing hotels and motels that can be converted to housing, which I think is great. I think we also need more "tiny home" settlements with facilities. But even more, we need low income housing that exists to be supported. Where I live, the city allowed a business to purchase an entire block of homes that were zoned "residential" and flatten them for a parking lot (ostensibly). Businesses and devlopers ROUTINELY are allowed to do things that regular homeowners can't. And all too often, it is to eliminate low income housing for someone elses' profit. And "low income housing" really needs to be for LOW INCOME people. The rents on some "low income" I can't afford, and I'm a teacher.
I'm not an economist, so I likely missed something, but that's how it appears to me.