What I Learned from 30 Interviews

...146 days to go...

Last week, I wrapped up my volunteer work on King County’s Point-in-Time Count—the biennial census of our homeless population that helps determine federal funding and shapes local policy.

I’ve spent the past year volunteering at shelters, food banks, and housing programs. I’ve served thousands of meals, sorted donations, and built tiny homes. But this was different. This was the best opportunity I’ve had all year to have real conversations with homeless people.

I wouldn’t call them in-depth conversations—I was administering a standardized survey, after all. But I got to talk to each person for 10-15 minutes, and you could definitely get a sense for how they were doing and what their needs were.

What struck me most was the sheer diversity of people’s circumstances, and how radically different their paths back to housing might need to be.

The People I Met

Let me share a few examples (these are composites to protect identities):

The young couple in a tent: A 20-year-old white woman who could have been me or Jen at that age. She lives in a tent with her fiancé. I know it’s ridiculous that it hits me harder when it’s a young white woman, but it does—either because I don’t see it as often (minorities are disproportionately represented among the homeless) or because it doesn’t feel as real when it’s someone who doesn’t look like me. Seeing her made it visceral: this could happen to anyone.

The man who couldn’t stay on track: A white man in his 50s who really struggled to answer the survey questions. Each question would send him off on a new tangent. At a certain point, I had to enter some educated best guesses about what his answers were because I just couldn’t pin him down. Whether it was mental illness, cognitive issues, or just the fog of living on the streets, he clearly needed more than just a job and an apartment.

The woman abandoned at five: A Black woman who became homeless for the first time at age five. The survey asked what caused you to become homeless initially, with two relevant options: “Family couldn’t afford for me to live with them” and “Family didn’t want me to live with them.” She was clear her situation was the latter. This broke my heart. Natalie was five once. I cannot imagine not wanting her to live with me.

Two Very Different Groups

By the end of my shifts, I’d interviewed about 30 people across a wide range of ages, races, and circumstances. As I reflected on these conversations, a pattern emerged.

Most (maybe two-thirds?) seemed clearly struck by bad circumstances. Give them some job training, a place to look for work with a shower and clean clothes, and I’d bet dollars-to-donuts they’d be fine. These were people who were motivated, coherent, and just needed a break.

The other third seemed like it was going to take a lot of work to get them re-integrated into society. They needed mental health treatment and/or substance abuse treatment, and a lot of support before they’d even be able to live independently. A couple seemed like they might not be able to re-integrate no matter how much investment we made in them.

Why This Matters for Policy

Of course, my observations aren’t professional in nature—I’m just a concerned member of the community trying to learn. I could be dead wrong about these assessments.

But what the experience underscored for me is that there is no single solution to homelessness, because these people are so different.

For the first group, requiring sobriety and mental health treatment as a precondition of housing is probably a reasonable approach. These people are motivated and capable. They just need a bit of structure and support.

But for the second group, that approach feels like it will never work. They just aren’t ready, and it’s obvious when you talk to them. Asking them for sobriety in exchange for housing is like asking a 41-year-old woman with a torn ACL to win gold in an Olympic slalom race. Sorry Lindsey Vonn, but it just isn’t going to happen. Many of them will need permanent supportive housing more or less forever, but at a minimum they’ll need housing first, without strings attached, to get them off the street, and the offer of treatment.

This is why I’ve become such a strong supporter of Housing First approaches for people with serious mental illness and substance abuse disorders. It’s not because I think sobriety doesn’t matter. It’s because I’ve sat across from people who simply cannot achieve sobriety while living on the streets, and demanding they do so before we’ll help them is demanding the impossible.

An Invitation

I wish there was a way for everyone to complete 30 brief interviews with a broad cross-section of homeless people. I think it would help ground the entire homelessness debate in our city.

There probably isn’t a practical way to make that happen. But if you ever get a chance to help out with a Point-in-Time Count, I suggest you jump at the opportunity.

You’ll spend a few hours of your time. You’ll have conversations you won’t forget. And you’ll come away with a much deeper understanding of who our homeless neighbors actually are—not as a political abstraction or a policy problem, but as individual human beings with wildly different stories and needs.