KIRO NEWSRADIO OPINION

‘Homeless levels will go up’: Curley explains why socialism is a misdiagnosis for what ails Seattle

Nov 17, 2025, 2:01 PM

Seattle recently elected Katie Wilson, a socialist candidate, to be the next mayor of the city. Wilson has been outspoken about her efforts to solve various issues in Seattle, including homelessness, affordable housing, childcare, and rising food costs.

KIRO host John Curley broke down his view of the socialist approach to solving Seattle’s problems and raised concerns about the handling of homelessness in the city, primarily due to the amount of money the city spends on the issue, which has not returned many results.

“We have a lot of smart, well-educated people in Seattle. What happens is that they see the problem and think that the sort of social, political problems can be solved with more government,” Curley said on “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “They’re going to step in, and they’re going to throw more and more money at it. They believe that poverty is behavioral, not really an external condition.

“It’s going to be really interesting to see what happens in the City of Seattle, because it’s a misdiagnosis of the problem,” Curley continued. “You believe government can solve this problem by taking a bunch of money and redistributing it, getting a bunch of caring people involved to try and fix that person’s life, when really the government can’t fix that stuff.”

Curley predicted where the homelessness problem will be in the future if Seattle does not choose a different fix for homelessness, aside from spending increased amounts of money on ineffective solutions.

“King County and Seattle have had increases in homelessness for the last 15 to 20 years, while spending almost $1 billion a year, but it continues to go up and up. They’ve misdiagnosed,” he said. “My prediction is that homeless levels will go up 11% or more next year because what you’re going to see is even more money being given to more of these projects, but they don’t solve problems. It’s never solved the problems.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

John Curley on KIRO Newsradio 97.3 FM
  • listen to tom and curleyTune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 3pm for The John Curley Show.

John Curley

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‘Homeless levels will go up’: Curley explains why socialism is a misdiagnosis for what ails Seattle