Homelessness is a crisis in Tacoma. TNT’s pick for City Council District 6 can help fix it

When The News Tribune Editorial Board conducts endorsement interviews, one question its members always try to ask potential office holders is straightforward:

For voters, what are the fundamental differences between you and your opponent?

Typically, most take the high road when answering. It’s not an opening to slam the person you’re running against, necessarily, though that sometimes happens; it’s a chance for candidates to clearly differentiate themselves and what they bring to the table.

In the race for Tacoma City Council at-large District 6, the choice voters will face this November between Kiara Daniels and Brett Johnson could hardly be more stark. Particularly when it comes to addressing the city’s homelessness crisis, both candidates gave us plenty to chew on. We suspect voters are in a similar boat.

Daniels earns our strong endorsement. Both candidates clearly have a passion for Tacoma, but hers is the vision most worth aspiring to.

The owner of a custom-made furniture company in southeast Tacoma, Johnson joined the U.S. Air Force after high school and worked as an air-traffic controller in Afghanistan. An elected Precinct Committee Officer for the Republican Party who came up short in his 2019 bid for the City Council, he told The News Tribune that his top concern is what he described as Tacoma’s failed approach to homelessness. Largely, it’s why he’s running again.

Johnson said he supports calls to create low-barrier encampments for people with nowhere else to go — in part, he said, due to his experience with a father who struggled with heroin addiction and housing. Taken out of the Tacoma-Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness playbook, it’s a move that makes sense. But Johnson also said that such an effort should be coupled with strict enforcement of homelessness and drug-related laws across the city, and what he called a “zero tolerance” approach to “camping on public grounds.” While The News Tribune Editorial Board generally agrees that enforcement of existing laws must be part of the city’s approach to responding to homelessness, the suggestion that we can outlaw the problem outside of a few city sanctioned sites raises significant red flags.

“I don’t want to see people getting arrested,” Johnson said, “but maybe it falls on the health department to move people. It doesn’t need to be a punitive fine. It doesn’t have to be jail time. We just need to get people safely into a spot where we can actually address them with services and actually meet their needs.”

Daniels, on the other hand, is the business and community development coordinator for Spaceworks Tacoma, where she connects Black business owners with resources in the community to help fight displacement. Backed by a who’s who of local Democrats, social justice groups and unions, Daniels — who grew up on Hilltop and has a long track record of important work in the area — agreed that addressing the city’s homelessness crisis is one of the most pressing challenges facing Tacoma.

While Daniels believes the city and county have made strides in recent years, she would like to accelerate efforts to expand shelter options and create more housing. Like Johnson, Daniels also has painful personal experience; in February 2020, her cousin passed away while staying at a shelter. To hear her tell it, the crux of the problem is the lack of resources and political will.

Daniels said housing should be seen as a right — whether it means building more affordable and permanent supportive housing in the long term or creating more shelter beds in the short term — and the city must also put a greater focus on homelessness prevention efforts. Building partnerships and maximizing funding and investments will be essential, she added. It’s a pragmatic approach, rooted in humanity and reality.

“Before we talk about banning camping, we have got to make sure that we have enough beds for the people that we have on the streets,” Daniels said. “And the reality is right now we don’t have enough beds.”

While whoever is eventually elected to represent at-large District 6 will have far more to contend with than the city’s homelessness crisis — like budgets, police reform and key zoning decisions — there’s a reason the candidates’ views on the subject get top billing in this endorsement. Tacoma residents have identified the crisis as the most important issue facing the city over the next decade, and without new ideas and new commitments to solving it, the situation is unlikely to improve. The status quo isn’t working, and the at-large District 6 position — which represents the entire city — can be a platform to shake things up.

Johnson gives a voice to the anger and frustration that many people justifiably feel, but even when his emotions resonate, his ideas for addressing the problem fall short. Homelessness is a crisis that society created, with real people and real lives at its heart. It’s not something that can be rounded up and moved along, as appealing as that might sound to some.

To his credit, however, Johnson is right about one thing: Something must change.

We believe Daniels’ real-world experience, attention to detail and underdog fight make her best equipped to help make that happen.

But it won’t be easy: To succeed, she’ll need to push the city beyond familiar talking points and distinguish her own voice on the council.

News Tribune election endorsements reflect the views of our Editorial Board and are written by interim opinion editor Matt Driscoll. Other board members are: Stephanie Pedersen, News Tribune president and editor; Jim Walton, community representative; and Pamela Transue, a community representative who serves during election season.

This story was originally published October 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM.