Opposites react: Two impassioned Seattleites talk about the homeless crisis

It seems that those who care about Seattle’s homeless crisis generally fall into one of two categories: homeowners fed up with neighborhood crime or advocates demanding more services for people on the streets.

But what would happen if two people on opposite sides of the debate could sit down, away from city hall, or heated neighborhood meetings and actually talk? Two Seattleites did just that.

Maddux

Meet Michael Maddux. He’s a former city council candidate who attended a meeting organized by the Neighborhood Safety Alliance last month in Queen Anne. Hundreds of people also showed up, airing grievances about the lack of police, needles near elementary schools, and human waste dumped by RV owners along roadsides and in public places. It got heated at moments.

Related: Heroin epidemic at root of Seattle’s homeless crisis

At one point, a speaker at that meeting argued that RVs should be banned from Seattle entirely. From the back of the room, Maddux interrupted him.

“I have a question, sir. Are you implying that you’ll be welcoming new construction for new housing so people have a place to live?”

Maddux argues the “housing first” approach is the obvious answer to Seattle’s homeless issue that has resulted in tent encampments and RVs throughout the city.

“If people have a door they can lock and live in and be safe, they don’t need the RV,” he said.

Maddux said he felt like the meeting focused on unsightly RVs, encampments, and crime, but skipped any discussion of real solutions for people living in those RVs and tents.

Norsworthy

Now meet Kemra Norsworthy. She was at that same meeting, sitting towards the front with friends who organized the event. She’s among of the crowd of passionate neighbors looking for a change.

“I want to lower the crime,” she said. “My son has to travel two miles from Ballard High to home.”

Norsworthy says her 15-year-old son commonly sees people using syringes under the bridge. He’s been approached several times on the bus, or while waiting for the bus, and propositioned for drugs or alcohol.

The problems don’t end with her son’s commute. Someone shattered her car window recently and rummaged through it. Thieves also broke into her boyfriend’s house in Magnolia. Crime is something she is well aware of in her neighborhood.

Coming together

Norsworthy and Maddux seem like polar opposites — the mom fed up with crime and the homeless advocate who wants to house families in need. But it turns out, these two actually have a lot in common. They share and intimate relationship with homelessness.

“I have a 27-year-old that’s homeless and a meth addict … yup,” Norsworthy said.

And Maddux faced homelessness as a teenager.

“I took a step out of the closet. My mother is great, her husband at the time was not so great, so I found myself without safe shelter,” he said.

I asked the two if they’d be interested in meeting each other. Maddux and Norsworthy both happily agreed to. We talked outside the Ballard Trader Joe’s and in an hour-long talk, they really got somewhere.

“The part that a lot of advocates on my side are missing is that it’s not a joke that there’s a public safety issue there,” Maddux said. “Needles are a public health issue and harassment makes people feel unsafe and there needs to be the recognition on our side and I totally get that part.”

He said it’s something he and his friends have been realizing lately.

“We need to also talk about that as real health issue, as a real public safety issue as well,” Maddux said. “Because I believe there’s more people like you who are going to be part of the solution if we can stop being on opposite ends and just screaming at each other. [That’s how] we’re going to solve this crisis.”

Norsworthy agreed that the intense, screaming rhetoric is not helping anyone.

“When people are defensive and reacting, there’s no way to hear one another,” she said.

They agreed to not allowing propane tanks in the new city-sanctioned RV lots, which provoked a high-five. Turns out, propane tanks are actually allowed, but drugs and alcohol are not.

Michael believes that’s wrong. The housing first model he likes would give people a place to live, then help them get off drugs. Not only in RV lots but in wet houses, like one in Seattle called 1811 Eastlake.

But Norsworthy disagrees.

“I think that just giving someone shelter to allow them to continue using drugs and to continue drinking is just another Band-Aid,” she said. “It gets them off the streets so they’re warm. Society doesn’t have to see them, but there’s still underlying issues. And there would be no need to get assistance because now they have everything.

“And I’ve seen other side of it with my son. It wouldn’t help him,” Norsworthy said.

Her son has been addicted to meth, off-and-on, for nine years. She says she’s tried everything.

Maddux, however, brought a data-driven perspective that had even impressed Norsworthy.

“Data suggests that the housing first model works extraordinarily well because people don’t want to be told what to do, but if they have housing, they have a case manager who will help them get treatment when they’re ready,” he said. “So it’s like, ‘I have housing. I feel safe. Now I’m going to go deal with [my addiction.]'”

Norsworthy was impressed these kinds of shelters have case managers.

“I missed that. I didn’t realize that in the wet housing there was an option for that,” she said.

They talked about moving away from government funding and how that can help solve problems. They agreed people in the RV lots should be able to smoke cigarettes — which they can.

Mostly, they agreed that this thing that they’re doing — talking — that’s a good thing.

“When people are defensive and reacting — and they’re doing it on the other side, too — there’s no way to hear one another, because, in the individual’s mind, they’re thinking about how I can be right,” Norsworthy said.

“And it’s not about being right, it’s about coming together as solution and hearing all parts of it,” she said.

“We can complain or we can look for solutions,” Maddux added.

They ended their talk exchanging contact information and vowing to keep in touch. And they took a few selfies.