Pam Roach still wants homeless shelter in Pierce County Jail. What’s the harm of studying it?

If we know anything about Pam Roach by now, it’s that she never backs down. Sure, the first-term Pierce County Council member and 26-year state Senate veteran can be rude, outrageous and pugnacious — and unapologetic about all of the above. But she can’t be accused of wavering on what she thinks her constituents want her to fight for.

Case in point: Roach’s determination to convert vacant pods at the Pierce County Jail into a dormitory-style setting for homeless housing, mental health and substance abuse treatment.

This has become a legacy project for the 72-year-old Sumner Republican, who’s not running for reelection next year. And it’s not such a farfetched concept; King County opened an unused wing of its downtown Seattle jail as a homeless shelter in March, while Yakima County commissioners want to do the same with a closed auxiliary jail building.

Roach has requested a $50,000 feasibility study in Pierce County’s 2020-21 budget. This is a modest step that we can support, as long as the study evaluates the pros and cons of opening space at the jail versus at least two other county-owned sites.

Roach also proposes hiring a county homeless services coordinator using money from a different position, already budgeted but currently unfilled. This seems like a reasonable way to improve oversight of scattered government and nonprofit homeless programs.

As the council prepares for a final budget vote Monday, we believe both of Roach’s requests are small investments worth making. But we don’t believe she’s put her finger on the root causes of the county’s homelessness crisis — including that people can’t afford skyrocketing rents.

While Roach’s heart’s in the right place, this is a multifaceted problem that defies simple solutions. At least 10,860 people experienced homelessness in Pierce County in a 12-month period between 2018 and 2019, according to county Homeless Management Information System data.

It was nearly a year ago that Roach proposed opening hundreds of unused beds at the downtown Tacoma jail. Armed with results from an informal survey showing nearly 70 percent of voters in District 2 supported her idea, Roach launched a PR blitz in January.

As she envisions it, nonprofit workers would staff the shelter, not jail employees. A separate entrance would help keep shelter residents fully segregated from jail inmates. Residents could come and go as they please, enjoying a clean living environment, meals, personal storage space and on-site recovery services.

Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor was an immediate opponent, citing liability concerns and the huge cost of retrofitting the jail; he also said Roach’s claims of 700 unused beds grossly exaggerated the available capacity of fewer than 100.

Pastor may be correct on all counts, but why not conduct a study to find out?

That’s what Roach is now willing to accept, despite the veteran legislator’s contempt for the slow, incremental pace of local government.

A feasibility study might not be much of a legacy, but at least it plants a seed for future Pierce County leaders to water. Or let die.

The truth is, policies for addressing homelessness should be driven by hard data, not by public surveys or populist rhetoric. (“This is the people’s jail,” Roach recently told our Editorial Board.)

To relieve people from sleeping in tents and on friends’ couches calls for comprehensive approaches, such as Tacoma’s Affordable Housing Action Strategy.

Implementing ideas like Roach’s also requires a dedicated funding source — say, a 0.1-percent sales tax increase for mental health and chemical dependency programs. Many local governments have this tax, but the Pierce County Council rejected it three years ago. Yakima leaders are considering it to convert jail space into the Yakima County Care Campus.

So yes, let’s encourage fearless, relentless thinking like what Pam Roach has brought to the table. But let’s also acknowledge it only scratches the surface.