When Bruce Harrell was elected, Seattleites had three top concerns: homelessness, housing costs, and public safety. Three years later, those remain the top concerns — and Harrell has failed on all of them.
Today I turn to Harrell’s abysmal record on homelessness. The outcomes are nothing short of catastrophic.
In Part I, I detailed how Harrell mismanaged our police department and labor contract, invited scandal into City Hall, and grossly underperformed on violent crime. He also fell short on overdoses and property crime. In Part II, I covered his failures on housing — for renters, for buyers, and for future residents — as well as his shameless attempts to block or defund affordable housing programs.
Homelessness policy has been a similar story of mismanagement.
In 2020, the pandemic shut down shelters and upended lives, pushing thousands onto the streets. Between 2020 and 2022 — the period most shaped by that crisis — homelessness rose 14%, adding 1,617 more people without homes.
Harrell somehow managed to do worse — with a far better economy. He took office in January 2022, at a time when inflation was real, but working-class buying power was rising even faster. He also inherited a surge of apartment completions from the Durkan era, which helped cool rent growth. In short: the conditions were ripe for progress.
But with Harrell at the wheel, homelessness didn’t slow — it surged. The rate of growth nearly doubled, climbing 26% — far faster than during the pandemic. That’s 3,480 more people without homes. Worse still, 2,125 more were sleeping outside in January, a 28% jump from 2022. By 2024, King County had 16,848 people homeless on a given night — 9,810 of them outside. That’s a humanitarian disaster in one of the wealthiest regions on Earth.
Meanwhile, places like Milwaukie, Wisconsin have drastically reduced homelessness by following an evidence-based approach called “housing first.” Harrell has only pretended to support that model. But as Greg Kim recently showed at the Seattle Times, this was a lie. His approach has been sweeps first, which has been extremely ineffective. It’s not far off from Donald Trump’s approach, just with more denial and better branding.
Yes, homelessness is rising nationally — but that’s no excuse. Seattle started with one of the highest rates in the country, which means we had more room for improvement than most. Cities like Milwaukee have shown it can be done. The evidence has been clear for years. But Harrell has always favored fantasy over facts — especially when pandering to conservative voters and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
Harrell is not a man known for taking responsibility, whether blaming a staffer when his own joke bombed, blaming racial profiling for his own arrest when he pointed a gun at a pregnant woman over a parking dispute, or calling his own judgment “spot on” after covering for a serial abuser.
But even if he tries to blame larger forces, his actual record on homelessness is undeniably his own fault.
Harrell’s Housing Policy: A Blueprint for More Homelessness
You can’t separate homelessness from housing costs. The strongest predictors of a city’s homelessness rate are simple: vacancy rates and the gap between housing prices and people’s incomes.
That’s why Part II of this series — focused on housing — is already a case against Harrell’s homelessness record. His housing choices aren’t just negligent; they actively set the stage for more people to lose their homes.
- Harrell failed to increase housing production enough to bring down rents and moderate purchase prices – this is a market sure to increase homelessness.
- He tried to lock in a future of housing scarcity. Rather than planning for the homes Seattle needs, Harrell pushed to enshrine exclusion and block growth — a move that will doom thousands more to homelessness in the years ahead.
- He tried to kill $50 million a year in social housing. These homes would have relieved pressure on the market’s lower rungs — and Harrell fought to stop them from ever being built.
- He gutted $92.5 million in deeply subsidized housing — and slashed food and rental assistance. At a moment when vulnerable families needed lifelines, he cut them loose.
The common thread here has been Harrell’s quest to preserve elite enclaves in this city – including his own neighborhood – and fighting against even modest taxes on high incomes. In other words, his housing policy is a rejection of basic Democratic party policy priorities.
He Promised Thousands of New Shelter Beds. We Lost Beds Instead.
While our lack of housing and services pushes people out of their homes, our lack of shelter beds means a huge number of these people are forced to sleep outside. The number vastly outweighs available shelter, which is why our shelters are full.
Harrell knew this. That’s why, on the campaign trail, he promised to add 1,000 shelter beds in six months — and another 1,000 in the year after.
That was nearly three and a half years ago. He hasn’t delivered. Not even close.
And it’s worse than broken promises — it’s outright reversal. Instead of increasing total shelter capacity, Harrell has presided over a net loss. Each year Harrell has been in office, we’ve lost shelter beds. Seattle has 128 fewer shelter beds today than when he took office.
Harrell is 2,128 beds behind on his 2,000 bed promise.
Harrell Promised Housing First. He Gave Us Sweeps and Lies Instead
“Dispersal only causes harm to individuals, and perpetuates the lack of public confidence in city response.”
On his 2021 campaign site, Harrell promised a housing-first approach to encampment removal. He even warned that dispersing unhoused people without shelter “causes harm and erodes public trust.”
Then he got elected — and did the opposite.
He’s repeatedly claimed, “We don’t do sweeps here in Seattle.” That is a lie. As Real Change reporter Guy Oron has documented, sweeps have become the default city policy. And as Seattle Times reporting shows, nearly half of Seattle’s shelter budget is being burned on these performative, ineffective clearances — moving people from block to block, solving nothing.
Katie Wilson called the approach “cynical, cruel, and cosmetic.” She’s right. I’d add clumsy and costly.
And the worst part? We know a better way. The state’s own encampment resolution program offers real shelter before removal. It works. But Harrell chose theater over evidence — and cruelty over care.
It’s the same playbook we’ve seen before: stir up fear, stage a crackdown, and call it leadership. It’s Trumpism with a friendlier face — but many of the same brutal outcomes.
Drugs and Homelessness
Whenever I talk with Seattleites about homelessness, drugs almost always come up. And yes, addiction is real — but it’s not what drives the rate of homelessness in the city. Research shows that the rate of homelessness in a city isn’t driven by addiction rates. It’s driven by housing costs. Homelessness is a housing problem.
Colburn uses an updated version of the old musical chairs analogy: if 12 people are competing for 10 chairs, two will end up without one. Now, imagine two of those people have broken legs — they’re more likely to be left standing. But if there are still only 10 chairs, two people will always lose out — no matter how healthy the rest are.
Addiction may help explain who falls through the cracks. But it doesn’t explain how big the cracks are. That’s housing policy.
And when people do have behavioral health challenges, the solution isn’t to punish them — it’s to house them and help them. That’s why “housing first” works. Not housing only — housing first, with wraparound care.
But Harrell cut the care. As The Urbanist reported, he slashed $2 million from LEAD and CoLEAD — nationally acclaimed diversion programs. He also cut $800,000 in behavioral health services for the Latino community and comprehensive substance use treatment, and $200,000 from pre-filing diversion programs that interrupt the cycle of addiction and incarceration.
When it comes to recovering from the overdose epidemic, Seattle has grossly underperformed its sister city to the south, San Francisco. In fact, overdose deaths are up 48% since Harrell took office in Seattle, despite being down in San Francisco. The cities have similar incomes and hit the overdose epidemic at similar times.
The result? Overdose deaths in Seattle are up 48% since Harrell took office — while San Francisco, with similar demographics and time in the fentanyl pandemic, is driving their numbers down.
Harrell didn’t follow the data. He didn’t invest in what works. He gutted the programs that save lives — and the city is paying for it in body bags.
Boulevard of Broken Promises
On homelessness — as with housing and public safety — Bruce Harrell has failed, utterly and repeatedly.
He promised more shelter. We have less.
He promised Housing First. We got sweeps and spin.
He tried to kill social housing.
He gutted nearly $100 million in affordable housing funding.
He resisted planning for future growth. He has had to be dragged, every step of the way, toward the most basic evidence-based policies.
And the results speak for themselves. Homelessness surged during the pandemic — but when Harrell took office, he hit the gas. The rate of growth nearly doubled. Thousands more without homes. Thousands more sleeping outside.
This isn’t bad luck. It’s bad leadership.
Ron Davis (Guest Contributor)
Ron Davis is an entrepreneur, policy wonk, political consultant, and past candidate for Seattle City Council. He is focused on making his community a place where anyone can start a career, raise a family, and age in place without breaking the bank. He has a JD from Harvard Law School and lives in Northeast Seattle with his wife — a family physician — and their two boys.
