’60 Minutes’ special on Seattle homeless crisis missed one, key point

The dazzling baby blues of Anderson Cooper looked into our souls and asked the question, “Why are so many people in Seattle homeless?”

We watched the story of a family (with jobs) who were unsheltered — a mail carrier and a database coordinator — but it really ended there when discussing employment and it shouldn’t have because that is a MAJOR FACTOR in our local homelessness conversation.

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I acknowledge that homelessness overall is a blooming onion of obstacles but let’s just focus on salary and housing here.

The HENRYS [High Earning, Not Rich Yet millennial] are real. First and foremost, they are high earners, so let’s look at this logically. What happens when high earners flood into a city invited by multiple companies at the same time? The housing prices go up and others (like your non-HENRY mail carriers) are out of the city or are $200 away from being out on the street.

This is not the HENRY’S fault, this is not the tech companies fault but it is a factor in the current problem. The city could have taken a radical pro-active approach by building housing options for the upcoming boom of lower to middle class residents but they didn’t.

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The homeless in Seattle 60 Minutes special missed a key point: Tech companies.

Why did 60 Minutes shy away from talking about the tech companies impact on Seattle’s homelessness crisis? It probably has nothing to do with the fact Amazon has a multi-million dollar content-licensing deal with CBS who owns 60 Minutes.

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