As Tacoma’s homeless crisis rages on, how one man is trying to help people on the street
Richard Dorsett wants you to know he’s not a hero or a savior. It’s not about him, he insists.
At 69, Dorsett is like many retirees. He’s got time on his hands. A couple of years ago, with his career in government relations over, he played a lot of golf. Now, with his wife Liz by his side, he visits Tacoma homeless encampments — almost daily — trying to help where he can while documenting the stories and people he encounters.
In a region with a pronounced homelessness crisis — where an estimated 4,300 are unhoused across Pierce County and only about 1,300 shelter beds exist — Dorsett is far from alone. The list of volunteers and organizations that have stepped forward to help those living on local streets is long and ever-growing. There’s the guy with a pickup who’s compelled to distribute water. There’s the book club that makes toiletry kits. There’s the Tacoma Mutual Aid Collective, the local branch of the Democratic Socialists of America and plenty of others.
Dorsett said he first became involved in homeless advocacy when a woman in a tent showed up at a church near his home. He has now spent 15 months and counting visiting local encampments. In essence, he’s what Tacoma-Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness member Rob Huff described as a “Lone Ranger” in the world of homelessness activism and outreach.
In Dorsett’s mind, he’s simply one of many people trying to make things better.
“There’s a story that I don’t ever want to be part of, which is, ‘Oh, here’s Richard, the great savior helping the down and out.’ ... That’s the path I don’t want to go down,” Dorsett said recently, not long after returning from an encampment near South 35th and Pacific Avenue, which was one of the first cleared under Tacoma’s controversial ban on public camping near temporary emergency shelters.
“What I do, for lack of a better word, is called harm reduction: taking water to people in hot weather, taking blankets and hand warmers now in the cold weather, and helping individual people get through this,” Dorsett said.
It’s an accurate description, but there’s slightly more to it than that. In addition to distributing essential supplies to the unhoused, Dorsett — through his writing, which is regularly disseminated via social media and an email list that includes roughly 75 elected leaders and local officials — has worked to document the humanity that’s lost when a city’s response to homelessness becomes a cold, abstract policy debate.
Dorsett’s dispatches are often critical of the city’s and county’s approach to the problem, he acknowledged, and particularly the clearing of homeless encampments, which he views as a “whack-a-mole” solution that does more harm than good. His primary objective is shining a light on the challenges and realities that people living without shelter often face, he said. As a volunteer without ties to area nonprofits or homeless service providers — which often rely on local government funding — he takes advantage of the freedom his independence provides, pointing out what he views as the local governments’ shortcomings and failures.
Basically, Dorsett writes what he believes needs to be said, and in the process makes the city’s homelessness crisis harder to ignore.
“I’ve become aware of our city in a different way,” Dorsett said of the experience. “Before this, I knew the problem was there, but I wasn’t paying as much attention to it. … Part of what I’m trying to do is to give a more accurate depiction, at least on the experience that I’m seeing out there on the streets, which is often different than how people mistakenly think about it.”
According to Huff, who serves as a facilitator for the Tacoma-Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness, there’s a real value in what individual volunteers like Dorsett are able to accomplish. Government might control the funding and most of the levers of power, he said, but the real solution to the crisis relies on the response of everyday people, he believes.
As winter bears down on us, perhaps that’s something worth contemplating.
Dorsett is just one of many people who have been motivated to get involved, but a few more probably wouldn’t hurt.
“I don’t have the expectation that government alone can solve the issues of homelessness,” Huff said.
“I’ve become convinced over the years that it’s ultimately a community response — and a community demand that the government take actions — that will end up having the biggest impact.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
