Seems Simple Right? Seems Obvious? Depends on your perspective or agenda.
There is Money that comes into Jefferson County Washington for “Affordable Housing”, it is NOT Spent on Affordable Housing. Plain and Simple.
There is clear evidence and records of millions upon millions reported in online media such as the Port Townsend Free Press’s in depth Expose’ on the Cherry Street Project. They get the MONEY, and We, the Homeless of Port Townsend continue to live in the streets. They waste money on studies, and officials, and other expenses that are NOT directly related to us, the Homeless of Jefferson County Washington actually getting housing.
There is a battle and tension on all sides of the homeless issues, this is understandable as the Public don’t know what is really happening to their money. These issues make the hard working, tax paying public agitated about us, the Homeless. There are local taxes to support the homeless, there is grant money and government money, and yet here we are chronically homeless in Port Townsend, Jefferson County WA.
Some say we are homeless because we do drugs. People in houses do drugs as well, some do and some don’t, we are ALL individuals. Being Homeless is NOT a Drug Addiction issue, it is a People in General Issue.
Some say we are homeless because we are alcoholics, as many homeless use alcohol to cope and keep warm, and become alcoholics because they are homeless AND many alcoholics LIVE IN Homes also, it is an individual issue, and NOT a HOMELESS ISSUE.
They say we are homeless because we are mentally ill, so they take affordable housing money and allocate it to mental health facilities and services, while we remain HOMELESS in PT. Some of us are “mentally ill” according to “that system”, some of us are hostile and violent, some of us need mental help, that is for sure. HOWEVER this is the same for those who live indoors, live in homes. Some have mental health issues and some do not, We are ALL Individuals. Mental Health Issues are not strictly a Homeless Issue. Mental Health Issues are a People in General Issue. So STOP using housing funding for mental health issues.
Housing FIRST is the Solution, and proven to be far cheaper for the community at large as easily proven in abundant literature on Housing First community models.
Another note on the mental health aspect, I have seen people come to the PT homeless shelter downtown and a few years later are seriously suffering with mental issues and drug addiction, of which they had neither before they stayed for years at the OlyCap run Port Townsend Homeless Shelter beneath the Port Townsend VFW. In my experience, the Shelter is a breeding ground for insanity, stress, agitation and drug addiction, for me anyway, it was the most horrible suffocating, violent, non-peaceful, unhealthy, hard drug rampant environment I have ever slept in, the street is way more safe, sane, comfortable, quiet, and peaceful, In my personal Experience and interviews over 6 years.
We, the Homeless of PT, can get $50,000 in tests for heart issues, or emergency hospital care. Then after that couple of hours, we are back to our tents, our cars, our shelter. Why insurance money is so prevalent to PAY the hospital, doctors, nurses and such yet not to possibly prevent the visit with housing, makes no sense.
Ya know how there is co-pay for expensive surgeries or big Pharm drugs? Why not co-pay housing, the Housing Authority (Bayside, Olycap, Jefferson County officials, city officials, non-profits, etc..) pay the rest. This for some, a subsidy, and for others we simply need No Threshold HOUSING, that SIMPLE.
It is all the basic principle of Housing First programs of which Port Townsend claims to embrace in their 10 year plan however they do not even attempt it. The reason? I assume it is greed, money to their buddies and their buddies business, money to the health care professionals, money spent to create buildings and projects to get more money for their ongoing funding agendas and NOT for actually Housing Us. As if they permanently house us then they stop getting grants and funding to pretend to Help Us.
Meanwhile the community at large is getting more and more agitated, frustrated, angry, some even violent and verbally abusive to us, as they really think we are the PROBLEM, yet we are not. We are all individuals just as the HOUSED. This growing agitation in the PT community creates civil unrest on all sides and it is escalating.
There is NO art project, no community program, no project of ANY kind that is More IMPORTANT than all of us having access to housing, to privacy, to a bathroom. Basic Needs are the foundation of a community, that is pretty simple. Meeting the basic needs of the homeless makes a safer, stronger, happier community for ALL. (along with individual accountability).
The tax paying community thinks they are meeting the basic needs with the shelter, but instead the money is used for survival and for massive overhead costs instead of actually assisting people to be independent.
A deaf ear to us in the streets, as they budget millions for Pretty Shiny Things and wasted studies, and non effective management.
GET A JOB THEY SAY
Many love to say GET A JOB. They love to harass the homeless and if they give us a buck, well we better spend it on what they approve of and NOT “squander” it as Port Townsend community leaders claim. They comment on social media, hey get a homeless person to clean that up, they could use the money. They clatter about how we are losers that need to simply get a job and wala magically we will have housing in Port Townsend Washington. That could not be farther from the TRUTH.
You may be surprised to know that many, if not most of the folks at the homeless shelter, and the homeless of Port Townsend in general have an INCOME. So every time you tell us to get a JOB as if that is a magic solution to housing, UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ARE FLAT OUT WRONG, along with discriminating and bullying.
Many of us work online. I have worked at local cafes and changed in bathrooms, showering at Fort Worden as all the other showers were closed to us. I went to work at 7am from the vehicle, it is NOT about a Job, and NOT about Income.
I have an income. This last couple years I have made more than many years in the history of my career(s). This does not help me to get into housing in Port Townsend Washington. Please think twice before you YAMMER at us to Get a JOB, as if that will give us the comfort and peace of housing, IT IS NOWHERE NEAR THAT SIMPLE.
I have a vehicle, of which I own. I have a driver's license, and a passport and a mail box. The OlyCap intake gal seemed surprised that I had a P.O. box so I am guessing that many homeless folks do not.
I have a 7 year old nonprofit corporation, I have a degree, have owned many businesses and I have a resume with all kinds of things that I could do. It is not a matter of having money or a job to get into a home. It is NOT simply a Matter of MONEY. I suppose if it’s enough money, say millions we could buy, but that is not the point here.
In Port Townsend and many other places, people have to have rental history, they have to have credit, they have to be a part of the mainstream system in order to rent a home, the property management places are rigid and I think discriminating. I have been a real estate managing broker for over 20 years and I find the real estate market here completely discriminating and illegal because they cannot legally discriminate like they do but who's going to call them out on it the market's too high there's so much money there's nothing you can do about that local issue.
I filled out OlyCap’s intake several years into being homeless. I asked for help with housing, and jumped all their paperwork hoops, which turned out to only be for them to use me for more grants, to add to the women they help statistics, age group statistics, and use my resume for some reason to continue their own grants and income. They did nothing to help with housing, now 5 years and counting.
The SOLUTION is VERY SIMPLE. It is not that we don’t have income. It is not that we are Mentally ill. It is NOT that we are Drug Addicts. It is not that we can’t fit into “society”. It is not that we are not “like you” and some sort of mutant hybrid humans.
Any community that people are laying in the streets, freezing to Death in tents, and has homeless people for over 5 years still out there, IS NOT ACTUALLY LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS. And they cannot claim to be a compassionate community. The PUBLIC thinks they are paying taxes to assist the homeless and affordable housing, however, the entities that spend that money ARE NOT HELPING US to Get Housed, Plain and Simple. EASY FIX with the kind of budget they all have. They are NOT actually interested in a FIX, because that will STOP the flow of their income.
It is as SIMPLE AS THIS. There is an impossible threshold to rent a home, a room, a place to live. One must have a rental history first of all, of which we do not have. One must have a main stream job, which is a huge hurdle as I have made money online for 20 years with my own businesses. One must prove income, of which many cannot. One has to have credit, of which most of us do not for various reasons.
Granted people are scared to rent to you if previously homeless and they have such a large rental pool with good credit, rental history, and regularly main stream jobs with “provable income” that they can choose, and having been a landlord who can blame them really, as I could be “anyone”. Thing is, addicts, violent offenders, abusers, alcoholics, sociopaths, ect. CAN and Do live in houses too, many of them have good jobs and awesome credit and is not simply a broad sweep description of “the Homeless”.
If the Powers that Be in Jefferson County Washington wanted us “HOUSED” they would provide a SOLUTION for us to have housing, kind of a No Brainer, Simple Solution. But that is not in THEIR BUDGET or part of the True AGENDA.
I have been a managing Broker, owned my own real estate company for 20 years, that said, the Port Townsend rental market is ripe with discrimination. I was once rejected because I was a known energy healer. Others say you can’t smoke pot on the premises anywhere, many of us have stress from being homeless and marijuana is greatly needed, even to eat or sleep. As many of us refuse their Mental Health poison drugs they push on us. To rent a room, apartment or home it is rental history, credit, first and last and all those hoops and on top of it helicopter landlords that micromanage your every move for the privilege of renting from them. I have been a landlord, owned many commercial buildings and homes over decades and have a decade experience as property management within my real estate company, I get why they do this, however, that does not stop the housing do-gooders from creating No Threshold rentals for those of us who do not fit that property management criteria.
The Port Townsend property management companies have an impossible threshold to rent, from the vantage point of being homeless, not to mention the discriminating prejudiced stigma we have to endure and most of us don’t make it through to actually be able to rent. In order for them to take our money we have to prove so much that we cannot, so we stay homeless.
Having been a property manager, I get the liability issue. I Stopped as a Managing Broker Owner, because it was NOT worth losing a possible Seller to an ongoing property management contract, as if the renters did not pan out, the client would blame us, the Real Estate Company. That monthly income was not worth it, in comparison to the commission of the Seller’s property or multiple properties. So I stopped providing that service at my real estate company.
To Me, with the kind of money they spend, all the County, City, OlyCap would have to do is build a hotel, motel, apartment type building. The room could be as small as they wanted. To simply give us privacy, shelter, a bathroom, internet so we can work online, get dressed and bathed for jobs and community social activities. A place to wash our clothes such as in house paid laundry
A place of No Credit Requirement no questions asked while at the same time Personal Accountability, if we are doing something illegal, harmful, violent, then we are not allowed to stay, plain and simple. To me it is all easily solvable if the Powers that Control Jefferson County Washington would focus their MASSIVE budget on the SOLUTION instead of the imagined, made up, assumed PROBLEM.
The MONEY is there in the form of Community TAXES, Grants, Government Funding and other. It is simply NOT used to Directly assist us to Get into Housing.
We need a place to rent that is night to night, or week to week, or even month to month, where we PAY but have No Entry Threshold, no micromanaging our lives, independence and at the same time accountability. No Brainer.
Yes there will still be homeless, however they will be way way less, and they can be helped differently and more focused as they may have no income, may have severe depression and PTSD, have fears and anxiety, have no way to get an income and need other kinds of help. You may be surprised to know that most I have met from the Homeless shelter have an Income, they are there because they can’t get into housing, not because they don’t have an income.
Things to Think about, as our community continues to raise our taxes to help the Homeless, and taxes for Affordable housing, and yet use the money to continue to study what we need, to try and fix us, control us, micromanage our lives, judge us, push pharma drugs and mental health officials on us and well seems like pretty much everything but the REAL Housing First Model, WHICH IS actually HOUSING FIRST. Then Services, then try and figure out what you believe is wrong with us. Housing first, then you can address the other issues if they even exist, for me they don’t exist.
As a 50 year old Woman who has been homeless in Port Townsend since May of 2014, I Simply Want you, the Public to KNOW that the ISSUE is NOT us, the Homeless, it is GREED, Local Government, OlyCap, Bayside, and other “official” entities that keep us from housing, as they spend your Tax Dollars on their wages and massive waste, with NO PERMANENT SOLUTIONS, of Which I Claim are pretty simple in a just, humane, lawful, civil, law abiding, ethical, compassionate society.
~ Reverend Crystal Cox
Bring Back Goddess Church
A WA Non-Profit LLC
UBI# 603 388 411
ReverendCrystalCox@gMail.com
406-624-9510
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