Comment: State homeless audit loses sight of who’s being served

By Dan Hazen / For The Herald

In a recent Herald article it was reported that, according to the Washington State Auditor’s Office, Snohomish County is essentially failing at addressing homelessness. The story by repoter Ellen Dennis summarizes the audit’s critique: “Instead of data, funding priorities were often reportedly determined by grant requirements or approval from elected officials.”

The state labeled 10 service providers in the county as “underperforming” due to (in part), “low rates of exits to permanent housing, high rates of returns to homelessness and high lengths of stay.”

So, let me get this straight (violently pinches the bridge of nose and squints) a hospital emergency room is “failing” because it’s full of sick people? You’re saying a restaurant is “underperforming” when people come back because they get hungry again?

Rarely have I encountered a more convoluted, self-refuting and asinine display of bloated, bureaucratic tone-deafness as this 73-page waste of our money. It’s equal parts infuriating and saddening. Worth noting is that, while the state’s conclusion was that Snohomish County failed to use data, the report includes these words on page 14: “Snohomish County used data to identify unmet needs, but the analysis was not comprehensive.” (In other words, we didn’t like your conclusions). And on Page 28 “Snohomish was the only audited government that said it consistently provided contract-monitoring training.”

So, I guess congratulations to the Snohomish County team (the only one of four studied county governments who met the standard of “data-driven” but still failed to be “data-driven”).

Using recently entrenched propaganda phrases like “best practices”, “evidence-based”, “data-driven” and “science-based”, the state of Washington holds a gun to its own head like Nigel Incubator Jones in Monty Python’s “Upper Class Twit of the Year” sketch. Congratulations, Olympia! You win! You proved to us that your system is a failure.

Remember, the center of that state’s critique is that we spend too much time begging it for our own tax dollars to be returned, we allow our own “elected officials” to direct the funds rather than the state (gasp) and we don’t spend enough time justifying expenditures to you. Where do you expect us to find the time to do anything about homelessness?

Not only does the report fault so-called “failing” organizations for abiding by the onerous rules for “grantees” (I hate that ring-kissing word), it takes 73 pages of “data” to come to the breathtaking conclusion that they are failing because they are failing.

It’s like “Dr. Data” (who is also a shareholder in a lead-based, asbestos cigarette company) reviewing your chart while you sit there, feet dangling off the exam table, anxiously scanning his face, only to be confronted by his hollow, mirthless eyes as he says, “Well, you’ve got lung cancer. You should probably stop having lung cancer if you want to continue living.” Thanks, Doc.

I interact almost daily with the homeless citizens of Marysville. I work closely with some of the organizations maligned in this report, and I can tell you without appealing to any “data” that the report is … exactly right. Surprise! We’re all under-preforming! I’m reminded of Jack Nicholson in “As Good as it Gets” when he shouts, “I’m drowning here, and you’re describing the water!”

I guess it would be one thing if this were an isolated example, but you may recall that just before this infuriating event, the state apparently got its feelings hurt when local leaders pushed back on its strategy to address homelessness. The strategy? Move them off state property (read: under freeways) and into local jurisdictions. “Viola! See what we did there, local yokels? We used math to fix the problem! There were homeless people on our property. We moved them into Everett, and now there are less people homeless!” Slow clap.

Someone from the Department of Commerce, (what do they do again?) someone from the Governor’s office, (preferably someone who has shown any level of humility over the last three years) and whoever signs-off on reports at the auditor’s office, should find their way outside where the “issues” have faces and the solutions don’t live in a spreadsheet.

Let me draw this rant to a close with some questions. Has it occurred to anyone in authority at the state that the reason the “data” (which I have no issue with, by the way) is not the problem? Did anyone learn in college that data poorly interpreted is dangerous? Have you considered that you’re missing what the data is revealing? (It’s much worse than you think, by the way). Does anyone with a shot at any real influence ever stop to think that what the “science” is revealing is that government is not the solution? That we’re “under-performing” because our pre-suppositions are flawed; that we’ve got the wrong goals in mind? That the solution to “homelessness” in our towns, in our county, state and nation, is rooted much deeper than housing inventory or wrap-around services?

It’s rooted in our hearts and souls. In our selfishness, short-sightedness and arrogance. In our incapacity to hold ourselves accountable for the rapidly decaying society we have created. No government can fix that, though many tyrants have gained a throne trying. Maybe I should thank Olympia for holding a mirror up to our faces. It’s not their fault, after all. They’re just reporting the facts. Heck, maybe we should see what they have to say about schools, criminal justice, or the environment!

Naw.

Dan Hazen, a regular contributor to Herald Forum, is the community pastor at Allen Creek Community Church in Marysville.