Saul Spady: Housing First has failed. It’s time for Shelter and Treatment First!

To be honest, I’ve struggled to write lately because we’re in the middle of the very work I’ve been writing about. The Quality of Life Coalition is in full swing across King County in 2025.

Our policies are now on kitchen tables, in coffee shop conversations, and sitting on the desks of the politicians we’ve been pressing for months. We have made incredible progress in getting the message out. The reality is simple: Housing First has failed. It’s time to switch to the Quality of Life plan of Shelter and Treatment First.

We’ve taxed developers too much, spent up to $1,000,000 a unit on public housing that doesn’t pay taxes, and built too little in a naïve quest to fix addiction with hotel units. Let me be clear. No matter how many billions we pour into government-run housing projects, we will never build enough units to solve the addiction crisis playing out on our streets year after year.

Talk to a firefighter, a police officer, or a frontline outreach worker. They’ll all tell you the same thing: people are trapped between addiction, encampments we enable, and an endless cycle of crime, overdoses, and death.

Here’s what the Shelter and Treatment First plan means

At the Quality of Life Coalition, we advocate for a simple set of solutions:

1. Public Camping Ban with Direction to Shelter: We’ve already filed a public camping ban for unincorporated King County and are gathering signatures. A week ago, Seattle saw a matching ordinance filed by City Council candidate Rachael Savage. This is a clear call for compassion with accountability. Nobody should live or die in a tent when safer options can be provided

2. Three Strikes Equals Six Months Involuntary Rehab: If someone overdoses or cycles through crime three times while grappling with addiction, we should not return them to the street to overdose again. Through a misdemeanor-based, court-mandated system (a modern version of drug court), they will be directed into six months of mandated treatment you can’t leave —the help they so clearly need.

3. The Fentanyl 5: Fentanyl and meth are not just drugs—they are weapons of mass death. This is not a war on drugs; it is a war on drugs that kill. If you are caught dealing fentanyl or meth, you should face at least five years in jail. Anything less is a failure to protect our community.

Here’s why this matters

For 20 years, Washington has invested in the failed Housing First mantra. An empty line that has doubled the state budget, doubled homelessness and slowly stunted private development to a trickle. 

Seattle has the cheapest fentanyl in the country. Cheapest in the country makes it unlikely that it comes from Mexico. My 2 cents, our fentanyl is being made here or shipped from cartels making it in Canada receiving the tools for construction from China. 

We are sitting on top of the supply chain, and people are dying daily because of it on our streets.

Another result of our Housing First Failure? One of the most business-friendly states in America has throttled its growth, sunk into dysfunction, and risks turning Seattle—our Emerald City—into the next Detroit.

It’s so obvious that world famous Detroit rapper Big Sean noticed while walking to get Thai Food and told his WA stadium crowd it reminds him of the Detroit of his childhood with all the addicts on the street and police doing nothing.

The choice in front of us

I believe the path forward is clear: 1) Pass a public camping ban with direction to shelter; 2) Push three strikes generating six months of involuntary rehab in 2026; and 3) Engage the Fentanyl 5, putting dealers in jail now,

This is not partisan. This is simply the rational decisions we must make now to turn our local ship around.

We need your help to keep pushing. These solutions don’t win themselves—they need signatures, volunteers, and yes, a little bit of money to keep the dialogue moving.

If you’ve read this far and you believe in what we’re building, please consider donating at KingCountyQOL.com. Every dollar helps us gather signatures, engage voters, and keep the pressure on not just now but in 2026.

Together, we can clean up our streets, save lives, and restore King County before we become Detroit.

Saul Spady is the founder of the Quality of Life Coalition, which is currently collecting signatures for a King County ordinance banning public camping when there is shelter space available.