Most voters favor Seattle Charter Amendment 29 (concerning homelessness) out of the gate

This autumn, vot­ers in Seat­tle are almost cer­tain­ly going to be asked if they want to amend the Emer­ald City’s plan of gov­ern­ment to add new direc­tives regard­ing the city’s oblig­a­tions for address­ing home­less­ness, the issue that most vot­ers in Seat­tle say is the top pri­or­i­ty they want the next may­or to address.

Char­ter Amend­ment 29, as the mea­sure is offi­cial­ly known, is cur­rent­ly await­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from King Coun­ty Elec­tions offi­cials fol­low­ing a late spring/early sum­mer sig­na­ture dri­ve that end­ed at the begin­ning of the month.

Although the sig­na­ture check isn’t yet com­plete, the mea­sure is expect­ed to qual­i­fy, and the cam­paigns for and against the amend­ment are revving up in prepa­ra­tion for what is expect­ed to be a live­ly gen­er­al elec­tion campaign.

With the con­tentious amend­ment poised to be a focal point of debate this autumn, we took the oppor­tu­ni­ty last week as part of our July 2021 city­wide Top Two sur­vey of Seat­tle vot­ers to ask respon­dents how they would vote on the mea­sure if the gen­er­al elec­tion were being held now.

Out of the gate, we find Char­ter Amend­ment 29 in a strong posi­tion, with 61% of vot­ers like­ly to vote in the cur­rent Top Two elec­tion say­ing they favor the amend­ment. Just 23% are opposed, and anoth­er 16% said they were not sure. That’s a net lead of thir­ty-sev­en points for the pro side to start.

Our poll of 617 like­ly August 2021 Seat­tle vot­ers was in the field through Mon­day, July 12th, through Thurs­day, July 15th. All respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed online. The poll was con­duct­ed by Change Research for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 4.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

Here’s the exact ques­tion that we asked, and the respons­es that we received:

QUESTION: This Novem­ber, vot­ers in Seat­tle may be asked to vote on a city char­ter amend­ment con­cern­ing actions to address home­less­ness and keep areas clear of encamp­ments. The offi­cial descrip­tion of the char­ter amend­ment is as fol­lows: This mea­sure would require the City to pro­vide 2,000 hous­ing units with­in one year; and, until 2028: waive land use reg­u­la­tions for units dur­ing declared emer­gen­cies; adopt home­less­ness poli­cies; fund behav­ioral health and addic­tion treat­ment; ded­i­cate min­i­mum 12% of annu­al gen­er­al fund rev­enue to home­less­ness and human ser­vices with­out affect­ing cer­tain parks fund­ing; imple­ment diver­sion pro­grams for law vio­la­tions con­nect­ed to pover­ty or behav­ioral health; and bal­ance keep­ing pub­lic spaces clear of encamp­ments with avoid­ing harm to indi­vid­u­als. If the autumn gen­er­al elec­tion were being held now, would you vote yes to pass this char­ter amend­ment, or no to reject it?

ANSWERS:

• Would vote yes to pass the char­ter amend­ment: 61%
• Would vote no to reject the char­ter amend­ment: 23%
• Not sure: 16%

Com­pas­sion Seat­tle, the coali­tion in favor of the amend­ment, hailed the find­ing, say­ing that it showed Seat­tleites are ready to take action on homelessness.

“The find­ings of the NPI poll are con­sis­tent with our own research and the response we have received from the peo­ple of Seat­tle,” the cam­paign said in a state­ment. “Vot­ers believe the best path for­ward to address­ing the home­less­ness cri­sis is through a coor­di­nat­ed, action­able plan that holds the City of Seat­tle and its lead­er­ship account­able in mak­ing mea­sur­able progress.”

“It starts with pri­or­i­tiz­ing the indi­vid­u­als who need our help through emer­gency hous­ing, access to men­tal health and sub­stance abuse treat­ment and oth­er nec­es­sary sup­port ser­vices that are need­ed to bring peo­ple inside.”

“Ulti­mate­ly, CA 29 is the plan that is need­ed to solve this cri­sis, and it requires our city to be trans­par­ent about progress and set­backs for it to be suc­cess­ful. As the cam­paign to approve the Char­ter Amend­ment begins, we urge all of Seat­tle to work togeth­er to solve this human cri­sis and not con­tin­ue to politi­cize it.”

House Our Neigh­bors, the coali­tion opposed to the amend­ment, told NPI that they believe the mea­sure’s fatal flaws will become increas­ing­ly appar­ent to vot­ers, and cit­ed Com­pas­sion Seat­tle’s ref­er­enced — but not pub­licly released — polling that showed even high­er lev­els of sup­port for the pro­pos­al a few months ago.

“[Back­ers] claim that their amend­ment was polling between 70–80% [pri­or to fil­ing]. So the fact that in a few months, a grass­roots cam­paign of cur­rent­ly home­less, for­mer­ly home­less, advo­cates, and over six­ty orga­ni­za­tions, bankrolled by peo­ple pow­er, not real estate devel­op­ers and cor­po­ra­tions, has brought that num­ber down to 61% is a great sign!” said Tiffani McCoy, Advo­ca­cy Direc­tor for Real Change and one of the orga­niz­ers of House Our Neighbors.

“Vot­ers are learn­ing about the disin­gen­u­ous nature of Char­ter Amend­ment 29, and how cor­po­ra­tions and devel­op­ers are buy­ing a char­ter amend­ment to influ­ence city­wide elec­tions,” McCoy added.

“CA 29 includes no new solu­tions, no new fund­ing, and cod­i­fies the forced removal of our unhoused neigh­bors into the city charter.”

“Their Amend­ment, if passed, would already fail our unhoused neigh­bors. It does absolute­ly noth­ing for fifty per­cent of those cur­rent­ly liv­ing out­side, and does noth­ing to deter the inflow of home­less­ness. It’s an emp­ty promise to end home­less­ness and it sen­sa­tion­al­izes our most vul­ner­a­ble for polit­i­cal gain.”

The Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union of Wash­ing­ton is among the orga­ni­za­tions that has declared its oppo­si­tion to Char­ter Amend­ment 29, writ­ing:

“Char­ter Amend­ment 29 (CA 29) would enshrine Seattle’s cur­rent inef­fec­tive and harm­ful prac­tice of sweep­ing unhoused res­i­dents and their homes from pub­lic places into the City’s Char­ter, while doing noth­ing to mean­ing­ful­ly address home­less­ness. The crim­i­nal­iza­tion of pover­ty is not only uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, but an inap­pro­pri­ate way to address the long-stand­ing and inter­sect­ing issues of hous­ing afford­abil­i­ty, Seattle’s racial wealth divide and com­mu­ni­ty dis­place­ment, and the his­to­ry of struc­tur­al inequity in housing.”

Com­pas­sion Seat­tle says the ACLU’s analy­sis is incorrect.

“Despite what the ACLU says, Char­ter Amend­ment 29 does not pro­mote sweeps, nor do we believe sweeps to be an effec­tive prac­tice to help those liv­ing unshel­tered. That is why the Amend­ment requires cre­ation of 2,000 units of emer­gency hous­ing and expan­sion of behav­ioral health services.”

“Char­ter Amend­ment 29 does not crim­i­nal­ize home­less­ness; it says noth­ing about law enforce­ment,” a June 9th state­ment from the coali­tion con­tends. “It does require expan­sion of diver­sion pro­grams so police, pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys and the courts can decide on a case-by-case basis whether treat­ment and oth­er indi­vid­u­al­ized ser­vices are bet­ter than arrest and prosecution.”

House Our Neigh­bors told NPI that they see three big prob­lems with the Char­ter Amend­ment 29 bal­lot title, which you can read above in its entire­ty (it was part of the ques­tion that we asked vot­ers). Here’s their analysis:

First, the bal­lot title says that CA 29 “would require the City to pro­vide 2,000 hous­ing units with­in one year”  but the Char­ter Amend­ment lan­guages actu­al­ly dic­tates emer­gency or per­ma­nent hous­ing, and the fact that this amend­ment would only divert rough­ly $18 mil­lion more to home­less­ness, these 2,000 units will be emer­gency shel­ter. The lan­guage in the bal­lot title makes it sound like per­ma­nent hous­ing units.

Sec­ond, the bal­lot title says CA 29 will “bal­ance keep­ing pub­lic spaces clear of encamp­ments with avoid­ing harm to individuals.”

This is a flow­ery notion and has no place in the bal­lot title.

CA 29 is all about keep­ing pub­lic spaces clear, and allows the use of force to ensure this. The last sen­tence in sec­tion three of the pro­posed char­ter amend­ment states: “In those cir­cum­stances where the City does not close an encamp­ment, the City may still require indi­vid­u­als to shift their belong­ings and any struc­tures to ensure safe­ty, acces­si­bil­i­ty and to accom­mo­date use of pub­lic spaces.”

Let’s be clear, shift is a euphemism.

A shift is a sweep, it’s a forced removal, it’s dis­place­ment, with­out any guar­an­tee of shel­ter or hous­ing. This is the true aim of CA 29.

Third, the bal­lot title repeat­ed­ly refers to how this will fund x, and fund y. This is wild­ly mis­lead­ing, as this Char­ter Amend­ment has zero fund­ing attached to it. CA 29 only requires 1% more fund­ing to be divert­ed to a human ser­vices fund, so that’s rough­ly $18 mil­lion more than we already spend.

Com­pas­sion Seat­tle argues in its FAQ: “2,000 units is not the end, it’s the begin­ning. This is an aggres­sive start to pro­vid­ing enough capac­i­ty in the first year to move peo­ple inside and make a notice­able dif­fer­ence in the region.”

And, with respect to the lack of fund­ing attached to the pro­pos­al, the coali­tion says: “Adopt­ing new tax­es is not nec­es­sary to ful­fill the first years of the plan out­lined in Char­ter Amend­ment 29. We believe the City of Seat­tle has the nec­es­sary resources in its gen­er­al fund, and it comes down to a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ti­za­tion. If the City demon­strates both suc­cess and a need for new fund­ing to com­plete the plan, they should then make that case to the voters.”

“Char­ter Amend­ment 29 is not a quick fix,” Com­pas­sion Seat­tle stresses.

“It will take a focused and per­sis­tent effort to per­suade indi­vid­u­als to accept hous­ing and ser­vices tai­lored to meet their needs. The best way to keep our pub­lic spaces free of encamp­ments is to fol­low the expe­ri­ence of oth­er cities who have suc­cess­ful­ly addressed this issue by meet­ing basic human needs for safe and secure hous­ing and by pro­vid­ing behav­ioral health services.”

House Our Neigh­bors says Char­ter Amend­ment 29 would take the city in the wrong direc­tion, not make things bet­ter over time. “The pro­pos­al is in fact a major step back­wards in address­ing the region’s hous­ing cri­sis,” HON’s FAQ says.

“Our unhoused neigh­bors don’t need more ‘com­pas­sion­ate’ sweeps — they need deeply afford­able, per­ma­nent, and suf­fi­cient hous­ing units, an expan­sion of proven options like tiny house vil­lages and sub­si­dized hotel rooms, safe lots for RVs and oth­er vehi­cles, and more wrap­around ser­vices,” the coali­tion says.

NPI does not yet have a posi­tion on Seat­tle Char­ter Amend­ment 29 and was not involved in qual­i­fy­ing the mea­sure to the bal­lot. While NPI does not take sides in can­di­date elec­tions, we usu­al­ly do take posi­tions on bal­lot mea­sures. We antic­i­pate tak­ing a posi­tion on Char­ter Amend­ment 29 this autumn.

If you’d like to dive more deeply into the case for and against the mea­sure ahead of the fall cam­paign, we rec­om­mend read­ing the FAQs and answers to those ques­tions post­ed by Com­pas­sion Seat­tle and House Our Neigh­bors.

Bal­lots in the cur­rent August 2021 Top Two elec­tion (which were mailed out last week) must be returned to a drop box by 8 PM or post­marked by the last out­go­ing mail col­lec­tion time on Tues­day, August 3rd, 2021. Hap­py voting!