Forum: Housing and funding for compassion

Published 1:30 am Saturday, June 20, 2026

I would like to share some thoughts about Nate Nehrings compassionate work to prioritize treatment and resources for people in crisis. The idea that “housing first” works to get people out of the cycles of addiction is not only a fallacy, but prioritizing it as first primary policy for the funding without proof of concept is an overreach by government.

Don’t get me wrong. All ideas should be brought to the table, discussed, and demonstrated as true or false. And reassessed over time as data changes.

I sat in council chambers and heard the recovering addicts (their term) say again and again Housing first doesn’t work. They would know.

There are myriad ways people find recovery from drugs and alcohol but the most common is “reaching the bottom,” whereby the consequences of using are too great. The problem with addiction is that the bottom keeps dropping lower with years of use.

Providing a “home,” and that’s a very generous term, does not help one reach the point of seeking recovery. People leave their homes to pursue addiction every day, I know, I have loved ones who have done so. Our tax dollars are not well used in providing a barrier to reaching bottom. In fact, they facilitate the predation of women and children because there is no accountability or 24-hour supervision. The government cannot provide that and it’s not their job.

What the government can do, and is already spelled out in our state and federal constitutions, and that is to enforce law and for the judiciary to uphold the law. That’s what saved the life of my niece. Jail. She was incarcerated long enough to be free of drugs a few days and then choose recovery. People think jail is inhumane, but it is more inhumane than leaving a twenty something girl on the streets to be raped repeatedly and abused. Government can and should enforce the law.

I am not against the conversations. I am against automatic preferential treatment to any system without strong data and input from recovering addicts and families who have lived it. If, indeed, Snohomish county were to have automatic priority given to the most successful pipeline, at present it would be faith-based treatment. That is proven most effective in the long term, actually, and isn’t that what we want? Restored life? Alcoholics (and Narcotics) Anonymous’s twelve step program and literature is based on the Bible. People may not like that, but it’s true, and it works, and it’s free. I’ve heard a woman say her higher power is her cat. Fine. Whatever works for you.

When our lives at home were in chaos due to my husband’s addiction I asked alcoholics how to proceed. One very important piece of advise was to find an open ended recovery program, not one that ended in 28-30 days and to hold him to it. I had a marriage and family as leverage and advice of fellow addicts who knew and informed me of the games addicts play to protect their use of whatever the product is. And I had real compassion for this human being rather than toxic empathy.

Government can’t provide that; it only has the arm of the law. Let them use it. For the sake of people trapped in the hell of addiction.

Tamara Nelson lives in Edmonds.