Pierce County’s plan to end homelessness won’t be cheap — but it will be worth it

“It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” Churchill famously said of Russia. He could have meant homelessness instead. We can’t agree on how to measure it, much less determine its scope. Responses range from police sweeps to hot soup, but nothing seems to work. On scrutiny it morphs into variants: veterans; alcoholics; street criminals; abused women. Short-term fixes compete with strategic efforts for scarce resources.

Our inability to resolve homelessness doesn’t only degrade business districts and neighborhoods. It doesn’t just wreck the lives of the unhoused. Our collective failure threatens the credibility of local government, and so puts at risk its ability to govern. Our social fabric is strained to ripping.

In December 2021 we got a needle and thread: the Comprehensive Plan to End Homelessness. Resulting from months of work by dozens of experts, the plan lays out how we can achieve “functional zero” homelessness in five years.

Functional zero means anyone unhoused finds a place to live off the street. Fueled by compassion and economic common sense, built on data, the approach is used by more than 100 cities and counties across the U.S. including some of the country’s biggest population centers like Detroit and Los Angeles County.

The local plan is distinctive in several ways. It accepts the reality of a county-wide problem rather than blaming Tacoma. It calls for a single system rather than a patchwork of local responses. It defines targeted actions in a strategic context. And it puts a cost to all of that.

Not a small cost: over $100 million in new money each year for five years. How much is that? All the libraries in Pierce County cost roughly $75 million a year. All the parks cost about $100 million annually. Tacoma’s entire general fund is about $250 million (though expected to have a $40 million shortfall).

$100 million a year is a big lift. But here’s the funny thing: we already spend that much on homelessness. The Comprehensive Plan shows an unhoused person costs about $40,000 a year in emergency services, health care and property damage. If we multiply that cost by the estimated 3,000 unhoused people in Pierce County, we’re already spending $120 million a year. It just doesn’t come from any one source or show up on any one balance sheet. It leaks out of our collective economy.

If stopping the leaks is too hard, how about new revenue? In Pierce County in 2021 about 30,000 homes were sold at a median price of $500,000. Total transaction value was $15 billion. A five-year tax of one half of one percent on home sales would raise $75 million a year county wide. On a median-priced home that’s $2,500 split between buyer and seller. Noticeable, yes. Brutal? Not like a night under 705.

Look, ideas are cheap. But the Comprehensive Plan offers leaders in and out of government a proven path. More than 100 cities and counties are on the path already. It leads somewhere good, morally and economically. We should take it.

Ken Miller formerly chaired the board of the Tacoma Housing Authority; he owns DADU Homes. An occasional TNT guest op-ed contributor, Miller has lived and eaten in Tacoma since 1970. Reach him at krm403@gmail.com.

This story was originally published February 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM.