Joe Molloy is homeless in Seattle. He wants to be your next mayor

Joe Molloy became homeless in the summer of 2024. Now, he hopes to become mayor of Seattle, centering his campaign around a fix to the homelessness crisis.

“There’s a complete misconception locally about what’s actually available for just, you know, the average, literal Joe Schmoe on the street, that winds up in a difficult situation, that loses their housing,” Molloy explained on “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH. “We have this conception that there’s a plethora of access and services available, and the reality is, there’s just not. And so I decided to run for office… It’s going to be incredibly challenging to even make a wave. But somebody needs to talk about this, and I wasn’t going to let another election cycle go by where candidates could just pass over this issue as if they were doing enough.”

Molloy said he is not a drug addict or someone struggling with untreated mental illness. After being unable to work for six months and struggling in the gig economy, he said he couldn’t pay rent and ended up homeless. He’s since been living in Tent City 3 in the University District.

“I tried all of the diversion programs. I contacted every aid organization that deals with us, couldn’t find any help. A lot of people even said, like, ‘We can’t help until you’re actually homeless,’ right? And so eventually got evicted, spent a few days on the street, just sort of walk without anywhere to go, carried all my stuff with me until I found Tent City,” he explained.

How will Joe Molloy solve homelessness?

Molloy says his plan to address homelessness centers, in large part, around connecting services that already exist.

“All of the pieces are there. They’re not functioning as a unit to actually serve people,” he said. “So I view what I’m saying as a different approach, not necessarily a different set of policies. Some of the policies do work. They lack communication and connection. We lack caseworkers, right? We lack advocates that are right next to people who are on the path of stabilization, helping them along the way, right?”

He said he would prioritize 2,500 new shelter beds immediately, launch a universal basic income program, and fund drug treatment. One of the more controversial ideas? “Safe use sites,” as part of his harm reduction approach. This strategy mitigates the effects of illicit substance abuse by providing “safe” supplies (like needles or pipes) to keep the addict alive long enough for treatment. But in Seattle and King County, leaders have eschewed treatment for simply enabling drug use. Molloy says his approach would aim to actually help people.

“If we had sites, sites where it was ‘safe’ to use, and the services that we were providing were pathways to methadone and buprenorphine… Like, really, actually helping people. So really, in general, harm reduction, to me, is an emergency response to get people through to these services,” he said.

Can Joe Molloy actually win?

Joe Molloy is under no delusion that he can easily advance to the general, let alone win the race for Mayor. As a homeless person, he says he deals with “misconceptions” from people all the time.

But he said it’s worth the fight, and he hopes to approach this without some of the toxic politics that can plague some candidates.

“I’m not here to villainize anyone. I’m running independent, and I don’t consider myself like a socialist, in the same way that many people here do, or a communist. I view politics in really an economic and social services strategy in this completely novel way, in my opinion. Maybe it’s not so groundbreaking, but I think left-right politics, to me, hasn’t really gotten us, as a whole, very far,” Molloy noted.

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