Our priorities have nothing to do with the arts

So, today is primary day. Whether you lean left or right, I hope that recent events have inspired you to vote.

I’m not smart enough to sit in an ivory tower and declare how you should vote — but I will tell you my logic on one issue, and that’s the $500 million arts levy. The short answer is a resounding “No.” But it’s not because I’m anti-arts.

So what are we talking about?

We are talking about setting our priorities as a community. And right now, arts for all isn’t even on most peoples’ radars. It’s difficult to happily make your way to the museum or theater while stepping over human waste on the sidewalk and dodging tents on the freeway.

If you had a sewer line broken in your house, would you be worrying about where to hang a pretty picture? I think not. You’d be in emergency mode to fix the top priority.

I hate to point out the obvious, but our region has the equivalent of a busted sewer line running right through the living room. In my opinion, our top priority should be to fix that first and worry about art later.

So let’s talk nuts and bolts. What’s working and what does it cost?

Right now, the city of Seattle is under a State of Emergency over homelessness, even though there doesn’t seem to be much urgency coming out of City Hall at the moment, unless it’s to hand out reports on the mayor’s genitalia. But I digress.

As it sits right now, King County has set aside about $40 million per year for this. But this year, there was an emergency $5 million put on top of that, and then another levy calling for $275 million over five years on top of both of those.

So let’s add this up: That’s $100 million per year for emergency services for a population of around 3,700 homeless people who are truly in a state of crisis. These are the people living under the bridges and in the Jungle. Some quick math puts our current budget at around $27,000 per person.

The best two programs that I’ve been able to find are in Portugal and Salt Lake City. That doesn’t mean we have to duplicate one of these, but they seem to be the ones that get the best results. We do care about results, don’t we?

The last numbers I could find for Portugal was about about $81 million for a 2001 program that completely decriminalized all drugs. They prescribe pharmaceutical grade opiates to addicts in a setting monitored by a doctor; they provide housing and counseling for the worst of the worst. Oh, and they saw the best results of anyone I can find. That’s $81 million for the entire country (not for a single city).

Salt Lake City, on the other hand, assigns a case worker to each homeless person. They will literally hold the person’s hand and take them to doctor visits and visit them to make sure everything is O.K. in the apartments given to them by the city. It’s not cheap, but it also gets results. And here’s a novel idea: the city just buys land to build their own housing units. Genius.

Those are just two examples of places that are getting better results than in Seattle. If you know of more, I’d love to hear about them.

So what are we talking about here? Let’s get our priorities straight and do things that actually work.

We already have the money, now we just need the will and some leaders who will do the right thing.

“What Are We Talking About Here” can be heard every weekday at 4:50 p.m. and 6:50 p.m. on the Ron & Don Show on KIRO Radio 97.3 FM.