Honesty About Homelessness and Urban Camping in Olympia and the Pacific Northwest

Progressives must face the inconvenient truth that their policies are failing their communities and the people in the camps

by Candace Mercer Olympia City Council Candidate

In order to address overwhelming numbers of tent and RV encampments in the Pacific Northwest, we have to be intellectually honest and stop calling it a homelessness or housing affordability issue. This is not to deny the existence of those two phenomena as contributing to the situation, but the real issue is the normalization and acceptance of urban camping with more people adapting to a subculture which has roots in substance abuse.

The camp in this picture was one of the first. This location was shut down when the city opened its first mitigation site one block away.

The current Olympia City Council is inept in their response and is not willing to look at encampments with clear eyes. Under their watch, camps are being formalized and brought under city administration with no clear plan for an end game. There has been an alarming lack of accountability.

87% of Olympia residents feel homeless response is on the wrong track according to a recent city survey. Rather than engage in self-examination to see how their policies contributed to this humanitarian crisis, the council believes it is a communication problem, that residents just do not know what a good job the council has done. They are spending…