FILE – A photo of King County Executive Dow Constantine taken at the King County Recorder's Office on December 6, 2012, in Seattle.
Washington state’s King County Executive Dow Constantine on Tuesday explained the housing market, not mental health or substance abuse, is to blame for homelessness in his state.while delivering his State of the County Address. The executive cited research from the University of Washington which corroborated his point.
“One widely held belief is that behavioral health issues, like untreated mental health or substance use disorders, are root causes of the homelessness crisis that we’re seeing around us,” he said. “This is wrong. University of Washington researcher Gregg Colburn has shown the cause of the homelessness phenomenon is not individual challenges, but housing market failure.
One factor distinguishing places of high homelessness from low homelessness is not the prevalence of addiction or untreated mental health problems or the availability of public assistance or the weather or even poverty,” Constantine said. “The one critical difference is whether there are enough housing units to match the number of people who need homes.”it awarded $2 million in funding to local nonprofits to provide housing for homeless migrants.