title: Episode 7: It’s the Water
author: Outsiders
contenttype: podcast
publication: Outsiders
published: 2020-03-18T03:01:00-04:00
sourceurl: https://cpa.ds.npr.org/s148/audio/2021/09/outsiders-episode-7-it-s-the-water-new.mp3
word_count: 5817
Hey, this is Will James. It's March 16, 2020. I'm recording this from inside my closet. Everyone working on this series is working from home at the moment, because here in the Pacific Northwest, we are at the center of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the United States. All of us are getting pulled into covering the virus, and it's affecting our ability to report on homelessness. We're trying to figure out ways to talk to people safely and responsibly without risking spreading the infection. We're going to continue releasing episodes of outsiders in the weeks ahead, but after this one, they might not come out every Wednesday. We're relaxing our production schedule a bit to make room for this virus in our lives and in our work. We are going to finish this series in the weeks ahead, because after this pandemic passes, much of the West Coast is still going to be in a state of emergency around homelessness and housing affordability, just like it was before. And potentially in a very different economy. KNKX has a new podcast out called Transmission about what it's like on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak. We plan to do a crossover episode about how the pandemic is affecting the homeless population. We'll put that right here on this feed. Meanwhile, the entire Seattle Times newsroom has mobilized to cover the virus. On SeattleTimes.com slash homeless, you'll find Project Homeless is reporting about how the pandemic is affecting people living outside. All right, be safe. Look for new episodes of outsiders in the weeks ahead. Here's episodes seven. Outsiders is made possible by grants from the Dennis A Hunt Fund at USC Annanburg Center for Health Journalism, Studio to be Seattle, and Jim and beard a falconer of Seattle. People will tell you the water in Olympia, Washington is special. It flows up through 90 feet of earth and out of a metal spigot in the center of downtown. This fountain is called the Artesian Well. All day, people walk up and drink from it. Some are homeless. Others are just thirsty. It doesn't have no additives. It doesn't have no floor to floor off that floor I ate or any kind of preservatives in it. That's just good natural water. Not like bottled water has nothing in it. It's called dead water. This is good for you. Bottle water sucks. The Olympia Brewing Company made beer here from more than a century. Printed on every gold and white can, the slogan, it's the water. People will even tell you Olympia's water is magic. You drink from it, you'll always end up here, you'll die. It's really? Yeah, they say that, but I don't know how true that is. Jessica's homeless in Olympia. We followed her story throughout this series. Here, she talks with Seattle Times Project Homeless Reporter Sydney Brownstone in May, as we walk near the Artesian Well. See, I heard the water here attracted people with certain energy from all over the world. The moves I heard it was a good magic. I could see that, but they say when you drink from it, this is the most wonderful place you'll ever be. It will always call you back here or something like that. Do you believe in it? I want to say, yeah, because I need to back here, but I mean, that looks just the fluke. I don't know. I want to say, yeah, why not? So we didn't drink the water and start feeling this magnetic. No. Some people believe a version of this legend is real. It's called the magnet theory. The idea homeless people are drawn to certain cities that are permissive or generous. It's an idea with consequences for Olympia, because people who believe in the magnet theory think the city's efforts to fight homelessness. Efforts like creating a sanctioned ten city, the mitigation site, they could make the problem worse. I'm Will James. This is OutSiders. In this episode, we're taking a detour from our main story to explore whether there's truth to the magnet theory and what it means for Olympia. People who buy into the magnet theory usually cite three main things they believe draw people to a city. The weather, the services, and lacks policing. We'll start with that last one. Do people have nicknames for you? Yeah, mine is RoboCop, because they say that when it's time for business, I'm all business. And probably because I walk really fast all the time, because I'm short. And therefore, if I don't, I'll never keep up. Amy Kang's a sergeant in the Olympia Police Department. She leads a team of seven officers who patrol downtown on foot. You know, we'll go down fourth and we'll head down towards Thurston Avenue, which is near the mitigation site. And there's a variety of places where we know people, and we know who's going to be there. And they're likely there. And I'm like, you know, I want to give them the best start to the day that we can. And so we're going to hit those places just to make sure they're getting their wake up. As we walk near Olympia's Day Center, where homeless people congregate, Amy stops short. Her eyes lock onto a thin man who's moving around in a restless jerky way on the sidewalk. She makes a beeline toward him across the street. Well, you look like you kind of twist the flex on a little bit. Oh, yeah, I know my leg. He tells Amy he's having trouble balancing because his leg hurts. He says he might have trench foot, a condition that happens when your feet are damp and dirty for too long. I'll tell you what, why don't you go right there? They have doctors right inside that building. Amy directs the man to a free medical clinic across the parking lot. They go in there and tell them that he needs to be there. He walks toward it. Amy watches him go. What about him caught your eye? I think he's tweaking. Basically he was moving around kind of restlessly. Yeah, we call it twist the flexion. And tweaking is a math, math use. Yeah. There's no law here against being high in public. You know, he's not committing any crimes. I just know that his behavior is likely to, you know, cause someone alarm or bother someone. And so to save him from somebody confronting him or getting mad at him or calling us on him. I just go talk to him. Amy knows many of the people she encounters downtown by name. One of the reasons she approached this man was she was surprised she hadn't met him before. What's he day, see? Moments later, something catches her eye and she speed walks into an alley, where two people are crouched in an alcove with her hoods up. You probably don't want to be doing it. Right? All right, thanks guys. I think it was the issue there that they were trespassing in this. That's part of it. And then also just the body language and the behavior. This is a popular spot for narcotics activity. And something was getting ready to come out of that bag, I think. Earlier, I'd asked Amy about a scenario like this. What if she catches someone shooting up? We could probably spend an entire episode talking about the nuances of this. As it stands right now, if there is dope in a needle, I could take it, but the lab is not willing to accept a loaded needle. And so there's no way to test it. So from a legal standpoint, there is no way for us to prove that what's in that needle is an narcotic. And so therefore, if you drop your dope and it's in a syringe and I walk up, there's not really any enforcement that I can take there. It's true that the crime lab doesn't accept syringes because of safety concerns. As we pass shops downtown, we run into a short man with a beard. I've seen him around many times, mumbling to himself. Amy stops to ask him how he's doing. Okay. Oh, okay. Okay. So he was... I couldn't really hear what he was saying. I couldn't either. I know a little bit about him. We have contacts just about every day. Recently, he's been the best, the clearest I've ever seen him. I'm starting to see the decline again. So... That's Ann Larson, who's also walking with us. She leads outreach efforts for the police department. And in Amy, work together a lot. We're both from Minnesota. Yeah, it's weird. We are from Minnesota, well. And yeah, now we're not. You bet, Jack. Ann leads two teams of civilians who work in this grey area, responding to situations that aren't necessarily criminal, but often end up falling on police to deal with. Yep, so both programs are extensions of the police department. So we average around 600 plus contacts per quarter for our familiar faces program. And this program has two case managers with lived experience in incarceration, addiction, poverty, and they are helicopter moms on 27-ish of downtown Olympia's highest utilizers that are super resistant to traditional services. So folks that are really a tangled web of trauma and addiction and homelessness, they really have these two peers. Keep them a list of that. Go on in and they walk alongside with them, whether it's combing knits out of their hair when they get lice, setting up tents again. Keep the Melissa out of there alongside them the entire time. I think a question a lot of people have is when they see someone on the street who appears homeless and also appears to have a visible mental health crisis going on. Why isn't that person somewhere else getting treatment or whatever? Like why they're still out there. The evaluation to get someone detained is very high because you're taking away that person's civil rights. Like you're basically stripping the individual of their civil rights to make a determination on their own being. We live in a country where folks can walk away from medical treatment. So you can get someone detained if they're an immediate harm to themselves, a danger to others, or they're gravely disabled, and gravely disabled. In my mind, there's a ton of gravely disabled individuals in downtown Olympia. In the mind of the state. These individuals are not gravely disabled if they can find something to eat and have slept maybe within the last few days and can answer a few basic questions, they're not going to get detained. And so we work really hard to encourage individuals to take their prescriptions, to reduce the amount of drugs they consume, or ultimately stop using drugs. But ultimately those opportunities have to be trusted. So if you and I didn't know each other and you were a social worker and you came up to me and said, it looks like you're having a mental health crisis. You want to come with me and go to a detox and go to treatment? I'd be like, who are you? No, get away from me. So when people trust the opportunity, they'll be like, yeah, I do want to go to detox. Again and again, and an Amy make the same point. There are limits to their powers. They can't just get rid of people. They can't force anybody into drug treatment or psychiatric care. They have to work with them. You know, obviously people pop off on Facebook and say, like the police aren't doing enough. Do people actually say that to your face? Like, do people actually... Actually, yes. This is Amy the sergeant, Robo Kopp. It's probably one of the things that keeps me up at night. It bothers me and the person that's saying that is not in a mind frame where they want to listen to the nuances. You know, they're just frustrated. And I understand, you know, but yeah, I mean, if I'm being totally open and honest and candid, it's crushing. It's my feelings because I work hard and I try hard and I live in this community, you know? Amy's been a police officer for 20 years. She's arrested a lot of people. But leading this downtown walking patrol the past couple years, stealing so directly with the homeless population, she says she's had to learn a new way of thinking about her work. We do have laws. My job is to enforce them. But if you are unhoused and you are flying a sign to get a buck 79 to buy your 40-ounce tall boy, and I come along because you're now in a public place drinking that. And I give you a ticket for it. Do you care if I'm giving you a piece of paper that says you need to pay $75 or whatever the amount is at this point? And if you don't, your license is going to be suspended, but you don't even have any ID. The other piece is that I can put somebody in jail but is the jail going to hold them likely not? Because jails are already at capacity or over capacity. Sometimes people think that people get arrested. And well, they've been arrested. The reality is, well, they're going to go down to the jail and they're going to get a court date, and maybe based on population in about 30 minutes, they're going to be back exactly where I first contacted them. You know? So have we really solved a problem there? People who buy into the magnet theory see Olympia as a kind of sanctuary where laws aren't strictly enforced. But Amy says what people might actually be seeing are the legal and practical limits to what police can do to manage homelessness and the behaviors that sometimes go along with it. Here's the thing, though. Amy and her officers do a lot of what looks like social work, but they're not social workers. In the end, they still lock a lot of people up. You know, I hear a lot to like, you know, you guys don't ever do anything. You don't ever enforce the laws. You don't ever. And I push back pretty hard against that because I haven't seen my officers walk by blatant criminal activity and just be like, yeah, we're just going to ignore that. If we find someone selling narcotics, of course they're going to address that in some way. Assault, you assault somebody. We're not going to just be like, oh, hey, let's talk about, you know, the trauma in your life. Like, we might do that at some other point. But yes, we're going to respond to those things and we do respond to those things. I would say if we average it out, we're probably taking somebody to jail every single day. You know, sometimes multiple times a day. Could you just, as I get the levels, right, just sort of say who you are and introduce yourselves, starting with Sydney? Yes, my name is Sydney Brownstone. I'm a reporter, a project homeless. My name is Manuel Villas. I'm a data journalist at the Seattle Times. Let's start with what you looked at and what were you trying to figure out? So we had heard from people in Olympia who were concerned about crime associated with homelessness. Specifically, there was this perception that people who did drugs openly and who were homeless were not being held to the same standards of behavior in the city of Olympia than other people. So we decided to look at a year's worth of arrests. And so we were able to get a year's worth of booking data from the Thurston County jail. Sydney and Manuel explained they looked at more than 4,000 arrests from all over the county where Olympia is. Thurston County. Their list leaves out some categories like people picked up for lower level crimes within the city limits of Olympia. But it's still a pretty big sample of who gets jailed in the Olympia area. What we learned is that 15% of the people arrested in this data set were either labeled homeless or transient. And transient means that they were not able to provide a home address. 15%. The 15% is almost certainly an undercount because often people will list their last known address. We saw plenty of addresses to from other states. California, Illinois or other parts of the state, Eastern Washington. My guess is if someone gets arrested in Olympia from California, maybe they're not just there visiting. Maybe that was their last known address. So 15% is lowballing it. 15% just to put this number in context. That is far above the proportion of Thurston County's population that is homeless, even in the most generous calculations. 15% of Thurston County's population is not homeless. I was trying to figure this out. What's the high end, the high estimate of people who are homeless in Thurston County? 1600. So 1600, let's divide that by the population of Thurston County. Yeah, that's 0.6%. 0.6% of the county's population might be homeless. We could estimate. And 15% of the people who end up booked into Thurston County jail are homeless and probably many more. I think we can safely say that. That would be accurate, I think. What did these numbers tell you? The information had a few variables to look at into. One of the first ones I wanted to check is what they were being arrested for. Almost one in every five of the homeless arrests had to do with the charge of control substance, whether it was possession, maybe sale, something else. That's in the details. But in general, the one in every five of those homeless arrests had to do with control substance. I'm wondering like what this might reflect. Does this reflect perhaps higher levels of drug use in the homeless population? Does it reflect something about policing, the way homeless people are policed? We do see evidence that there is drug use in encampments. I don't want to deny that at all. It's hard to get an accurate reading of what that actually is. I'm hesitant to put any kind of figure on it. But these numbers are about a rest. What we can say is that they are arrested for drug-related crimes disproportionately compared to their population. Is there any evidence in the data that you looked at for the idea that Thurston County is a particularly permissive place? If you think that people aren't getting arrested for drug-related crimes because they are homeless, because there's this overwhelming sense of compassion, that's not what we see in the data. What we see in the data is that people are getting arrested for drug crimes and homeless people are getting arrested for drug crimes too. And even at a higher rate than the general population. We look into some other forces people believe are driving the magnet effect. And find that some of it is true. That's after the break. I'm Viana Davila, editor of the Seattle Times Project Homeless. Our team has done a lot of work covering homelessness in Seattle and King County. But we know there are more stories to tell across the state. So we decided to partner with the team at K&KX Public Radio and join them on the ground in Washington State Capitol to learn more about the homelessness crisis there. We wouldn't be able to do any of this if it weren't for our readers and listeners who support us. So here's what we're asking for me. First, rate outsiders on Apple Podcasts. It really helps people find it. You can also subscribe to the Seattle Times and sign up to make a monthly donation to King County X. You can find links that will help you do that in the episode description. We really appreciate it. This idea of the magnet theory. Sometimes it makes the rhetoric around homelessness sound a lot like the rhetoric around immigration. Right? It's like these people are coming here from elsewhere, these outsiders, these others. And they are harming our community or they're a burden on our community. We hear this idea a lot. In fact, up the road in Seattle, it's such a common insecurity that they actually have a name for it. They call it free-addle. Oh yeah, I've heard that. I'm talking with Scott Greenstone, who's reported on the magnet theory for project homeless at the Seattle Times. Scott and I each looked into different aspects of the magnet theory to see if there's any truth in any of them. I started with the weather. So yeah, this is an eternal question. Whether the very temperate climate on the West Coast is a reason that there are more unsheltered people here because they're able to live outside here without extreme temperatures and a lot of snow and stuff like that. Yeah, I hear that a lot. The problem with that theory is that President Trump's housing secretary Ben Carson in the 2019 report on homelessness to Congress. And literally the first page says this isn't true. The evidence he cites is that four out of the five states with the lowest per capita homeless populations are really, really warm states. Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Virginia. Those are four of the five states. The other ones in North Dakota, which is, you know, can be a pretty cold state. But Ben Carson, Trump's housing secretary is basically saying like, if warm weather were a main driver of a state's homeless population, we could probably expect these warm southern states to have bigger homeless populations. But that begs a question. It's like, do people migrate to different areas for other reasons? So tell me how long you've been in Olympia now? About what? Too much, though? Yeah, it's been about too much. In the very beginning of this project, I've asked people who are homeless where they're from and how they ended up in Olympia. Two of the first people I posed that question to were Jasmine and Travis, a married couple I met at Olympia's Sanction Tent City, the mitigation site, a few weeks after it opened. Where did you come here from? You can't hear from Vegas by way of DC. Back in Washington, DC, Jasmine worked as an administrative assistant for different federal agencies. Travis was an assistant manager at a falafel restaurant. They were struggling, exhausted. They worked opposite schedules. And they said, people around them kept dying. You know, you get tired of saying goodbye to your friends. What do you mean saying goodbye to your friends? Like when they die. Yeah, they get killed. That's like the main thing for me. I'm tired of seeing all my friends die. Like, I literally, before we left, I had like two of my best friends die like once within each other. I'm what? Getting shot. One day, Travis and Jasmine left. They started traveling the country doing odd jobs they found on Craigslist. Travis did moving jobs, Jasmine did hair styling. They described this time as liberating and relaxing until they hit Las Vegas and got in a car accident. Well, I was a driver and I just ran into the back of a truck trying to avoid another car. That's scary. Yeah, it's very scary. They were okay, but without their car, they had nowhere to sleep and nowhere to get jobs. They were stranded. And in acquaintance popped into their lives with a solution. Did you hear about Olympia from somewhere? Yeah, it was in Vegas and we had a friend. His name was up to her from New York, but he lived in Seattle for like, I think 10 years. And while he was there, it was like, yeah, I need to come to Olympia because they helped you out. They got all this other stuff. And we was just like, not to be funny, but some of the day made weed legal. Like, I really wanted to go. Not in the first person. Yeah, it's like, I'm going to make it there. And once he gave us the opportunity to go, it was like, all right, let's go see what it's about. Do you take like a bus up here? Bus it, okay. What was it, Greyhound? Yeah, it went through Catholic charities. And then he got us a ticket out here. And he'd been here ever since. Jasmine and Travis were drawn to Olympia. Hopefully they could get help there, a place to stop, breathe and reset. But their story plays into some very old anxieties. One of the oldest ideas is that generosity will draw people who want to take advantage of it. This concept is so old that there was a lot of past way back in 15th century England by King Henry VII, declaring that the so-called impotent poor people who couldn't work beggars, they would be forced to return to where they were from and beg there and only there. And the idea of being where you're from, that community, they should be the ones to take care of you. That's kind of the first example I could find of this idea, so there's this magnet effect that people are coming here to take advantage of our generosity. Your friend, Uptown, he said, who he met in Vegas, he told you that Olympia was a place where like, the city would help you out or the charities would help you out or whatever. This one is very helpful to, you know, say you can get close, but I only came out here with just a Nike hoodie on and some sweats. And that's one thing that I can't say about them and they help out way more than they do back ease. Or anywhere we ever really seen, because I mean in Vegas they help you with the Salvation Army shelter, but they don't have a tent site for their homes. Who are sleeping outside, outside of stores or behind stores or whatever. This is a lot better. When I first heard Travis and Jasmine's story, it seemed like a sign Olympia really was this beacon to people from all over looking for help. But Scott says the data we have about how people move around while homeless contradict that idea. So for instance, the Veterans Administration, they looked at a hundred thousand homeless veterans and followed them for three years. They looked at, for instance, Seattle, Seattle's service area for Veterans Administration. And they did gain homeless veterans moving in from other parts of the country, but they also lost a lot of folks in the same period. So in the end, Seattle only gained about 0.4% of its veteran homeless population between 2011 and 2015. A fraction of 1%. A fraction of 1% and lower than the average. Seattle got fewer homeless veterans than the average city gained. So what that suggests is that yes, people move around while they're homeless, but they're not necessarily all moving to the same place. The Olympia area's annual census of the homeless population asks people where they were last housed. And in 2019, the biggest chunk of people, about half, before they became homeless, they lived right in the county where Olympia is. A smaller chunk, about a third, became homeless somewhere else in the state and then moved to the Olympia area. Less than 15% of people came from out of state. In the end, Travis and Jasmine's story was the only one I heard quite like it, where Olympia was this beacon guiding them from hundreds of miles away. More often, when people did come from far away, it was an accident. They followed a partner here or even got stranded on a road trip. Some joked it was the artesian well water that kept them in Olympia. While there's not evidence for mass migration across the country bringing people to certain cities, there is evidence for a local magnet effect. When you look at the numbers, they show Olympia is absorbing a lot of people who are homeless from the surrounding area. I've talked to, and I think you've probably talked to plenty of folks who want to get drug treatment, but they can't get it where they're from, or they can't get it very easily. There's good evidence that folks do come from rural areas and suburbs into a city because that city has the services. Olympia is a perfect example. It's the only place in Thurston County that has any year-round shelter beds. It has almost all the services for addiction for mental health in the entire county, in the greater area until you get to Tacoma. It is drawing folks in, and I talked to one guy who studied this in Vancouver, Canada, who looked at folks migrating into Vancouver's downtown east side, and he said this thing that really stuck in my head. He said there's a magnet effect, and there's a propulsion effect, and the propulsion effect is wherever they started, they're feeling pressure to get out. So I think that we do need to recognize that there is some sort of magnet effect or propulsion effect that does exist. It's not a total myth. Homeless folks, just like anybody, do travel for work, for family, or even just sometimes because they think some place does sound like a better place to get back on their feet, or even sometimes to be homeless than where they're living. You know what? People in Olympia who are homeless will actually just fly out and tell you this. There's a lot of resources. I mean, you can get on your feet here. They take care of their homeless pretty good here in Olympia. You know, they feed you, you don't have to worry about eating around here, that's for sure. Your guarantee is six meals a day, just between the mission and sub-achion army. This is the best place that I've been that actually has more stuff for homeless than any state I've been in so far. In close, if you're wet and cold, can you ain't got a blanket? Go to this clothing bank, that clothing bank, this clothing bank up here, the one up here just self. The one in Evergreen forgiving, the outpouring is excellent. Because this is almost heaven. I've been staying up for 10 years. I guess beautiful mountains, you know, it's beautiful people who care about other people. For Jasmine and Travis, Olympia was everything they hoped. They give, like even that salvation army, they give you enough meals so that you can sustain throughout the day without, we don't get any type of legal assistance, like our federal, food stamps or anything like that. Why not? Because ain't none of the law with us. Ain't no, we're not disabled or not. And kind of how we were raised, I think it wasn't like, if you don't have a job, go get food stamps. It's not like that at home, it's more like a, get another job. Figure it out, pull a gig, tell somebody you'll clean their house for some money if you don't have no money. You guys left DC to kind of get away from a situation there. You weren't happy there. Has this been an improvement from your past life there? An improvement? I mean, it's not like the greatest times of our lives. It's not an improvement, but it's a stepping stone type of thing. We're like a brand new page to a brand new book, really. Last I heard, Travis and Jasmine had moved out of the tent city and into their own apartment in a suburb of Olympia. It's an example of Olympia's plan to help people escape homelessness. The plan laid out in episode one, working exactly as intended. But it's also an example of a challenge facing Olympia. Even though homelessness is a regional, even a national problem, it's mostly dealt with at the local level. In Olympia's case, this one city is bearing the financial and social costs of homelessness for miles and miles around it. It is at times frustrating because it does get kind of laid on the lap of a city. To me, I don't know how this is in the state emergency, honestly. You know, like this is huge, you know. Call and DeForest works for the city of Olympia. From the very beginning of this series, he's been trying to invent new ways to manage unsheltered homelessness. And from the very beginning, he's argued Olympia's success depends on getting neighboring cities, the county, even the state to pitch in. Because if not, the problem might be too much for one city to fix on its own. I think whether you're a government employee or you're a resident or you're a business owner, the homelessness issue is huge. And it takes a while to even just digest and figure out what is our role in this. How can we be involved in this and not just be like paralyzed by, ugh, I don't want this. And I think that's what there's a lot of around the country right now, and even in the Olympia area, so yeah. Next on OutSiders, we go back to the 10th city, Colin Helps Create, the mitigation site. And try to answer a question we posed at the beginning of this series. Did Olympia's plan work? Can this city point to a way forward? Is there something special about Olympia? Olympia draws all kinds of people because of the energies that it puts off. Then the natural artesian wells here have to do with that, and it draws a lot of weird people. But it also draws a lot of spiritual people. And I think that gives Olympia the authenticity that everybody's looking for. Fireworks are starting. Yeah. OutSiders is a collaboration between KNKX Public Radio and the Seattle Times Project Homeless Team. This episode was reported and written by Scott Greenstone, Sydney Brownstone, and me, Will James, with help from Manuel Vía. Our editors are Aaron Hennessy and Bethany Denton, who's also our mix engineer. Additional editing by Anna Susman. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to Viana Davila of Project Homeless at the Seattle Times, KNKX Director of Content Matt Martinez and Digital Content Manager, Cari Plogue. Parker Miles Blom took photos for the project, Adrian Flores designed our logo. Special thanks to Austin Jenkins. I'm Will James. Thank you for listening.