Seattle Nice: Real Solutions to Homelessness with DESC's Daniel Malone
The latest episode of Seattle Nice.
By Erica C. Barnett
We had a special guest on this week's episode of Seattle Nice: Downtown Emergency Service Center director Daniel Malone!
DESC provides low-barrier shelter, housing, and health care to some of Seattle's most vulnerable homeless folks, and has been at the vanguard of the housing-first response to homelessness for decades; the nonprofit's 1811 Eastlake project, which remains the only housing in Seattle explicitly for people with alcohol use disorder that welcomes residents with no plan to stop drinking, is a model that should be emulated across the city and beyond.
It's challenging to sell elected officials on the idea of harm reduction (including the inadequate, but bare-minimum, notion that people can't get sober if they're dead), especially right now (cue Sara Nelson talking about the need to fund housing that kicks people out if they relapse.) But Malone has been here through several political pendulum swings, and he's managed to get more than a few moderate-to-conservative Seattle officials to buy in to DESC's low-barrier model.
On this week's show, we talked with Daniel about the future of King County's so-called regional approach to homelessness; what it really means when the mayor declares he has "reduced tents by 65 percent"; and the endless debate over which approach to homelessness works better, housing or shelter.
Daniel also responded to a common question about housing for formerly homeless people: Given that it costs so much to build housing in Seattle, why not move people from here to places where housing is cheaper, like Puyallup or Enumclaw?
Learn from one of the region's hands-on experts on homelessness by listening to Seattle Nice now, and if you like the show, please leave a five-star review on Apple podcasts; it really helps us get the word out about the show!