EVERETT, JUNE 11: Snohomish County Councilmember, Jared Mead, cast a deciding vote on a new ordinance for addressing homelessness by candidly speaking about his estranged father’s fatal drug over-dose three years ago. Mead voted in favor of a new county ordinance that will codify sober or recovery housing options when it comes to spending county tax dollars sheltering homeless people.
The ordinance passed 3-2 with Mead joining sponsor Nate Nehring and Sam Low in support. Councilmembers Megan Dunn and Strom Peterson voted against Ordinance 26-019 which will “prohibit, discourage, or give lower priority to subrecipients or contractors who include requirements for sobriety, treatment, counseling or illicit drug testing” regarding homeless support services.
Nehring’s ordinance is designed to codify equal consideration for county homeless spending and not allow ‘housing first’ to be used as a priority. “The purpose of the ordinance is to insure that going into the future when we’re talking about county dollars, we’re able and open to receiving applications from a wide range,” of providers, said Nehring, “so that we can have the most competitive applicants competing in the same process and then ultimately selecting the best one.”
Dunn, the County Council Chair, tells EverettPost.com, “we (Snohomish County) do not currently prioritize funding for housing first programs. And so there will be no change as a result of this legislation (being approved). It really created a false binary between housing stability and accountability. It does not serve our community, and the ordinance was not offering results or solutions but really relied on misinformation and division.”
The division Dunn references is utilizing one homeless policy approach, for instance, ‘housing first’ and/or low-barrier housing where intoxicating drug consumption is allowed, versus another approach like ‘sober’ or ‘recovery’ housing where sobriety is required to continue accessing the housing and support services.
Mead disclosed the candid details of discovering his estranged father died in a tent from a fentanyl overdose before the roll call vote yesterday, “My dad, my blood father, left my family when I was 6 years old. After (age) 10 I didn’t see him for 21 years until a few years ago I tracked him down and found him in a homeless encampment in Southwest Washington. I actually went and spoke with him–sat with him for 7 or 8 hours–and showed him pictures of his grandkids. And we cried together and shared our stories. And he told me about his life. And we made plans to reconnect later in the year and let him meet my wife and let him meet his grand kids. And three months later I get a call from the King County coroner’s office asking me if I wanted to come pick up his body. He had died of a fentanyl over does—this was 3 years ago—in a tent by himself in the woods. And that is his story of life through addiction. He didn’t get to spend time with his kids or his grand kids. He did things to his wife in front of his kids that no human that is thinking rationally ever would.
Mead emphasized that he sees every addiction story as different and a ‘one-size’ approach doesn’t yield results in addressing homelessness, referencing nearly two hours of public testimony for and against the ordinance regarding sober recovery housing being considered equally with housing first options.
“So housing first?”, Mead asked. “Absolutely (it) has shown results,” he continued answering his own question. “It has helped people get off the streets and get clean and get stable housing and become productive members of society. And become good grandparents and dads. And there’s also all the stories that you can’t prove with a data point that housing first did not work. They were not willing to go access those types of services. They would choose to because of an addiction continue to deteriorate until eventually dying in the woods. So, we’re always going to have this conversation with the stories and the anecdotes in mind rather than the data points because the data points don’t tell the full story. And so my point is that we should have a spectrum of services, we should have housing first options, we should have treatment first/sober housing options. And with a policy like this, that’s all that this is codifying. It evens the playing field which is exactly what we’re doing now. So, I think we should have maximum flexibility with these monies—very limited monies…we should be basing our acceptance of applications and our awards of county taxpayer dollars based on outcomes.
We want to know if a provider is applying that they have results at the other end of it that show sobriety, show success. And in some instances, that’s going to be housing first and some instances it’s not. In some instances, they’re going to be housing first applicants that suck and do not have good outcomes. And some instances are going to be sober housing that suck and have no outcomes. We should be basing (this) off of the provider’s processes and their outcomes at the end of the day because that’s what we should be focused on. This money should be spent to get people clean and sober and into stable housing.”