The Price of Silence

When is the last time you visited downtown Seattle? Or Portland? Or San Francisco? Are these places the towns you once vacationed to and felt safe site seeing?

Nearly thirteen years ago, I prayed for death as I wandered the streets of Tacoma in the middle of the night—no place to go, no belongings, everything I owned stolen along with my car. I was certain God could see the rationale in ending my waste of a life.

A short time later, I was arrested driving a stolen truck, trying to flee to nowhere with nothing. The moment I sat in the back of that Pierce County Sheriff’s vehicle, I knew my life was going to change. I was terrified and relieved in the same breath. The struggle was over.

Here’s the truth nobody wants to say: I was homeless because I was using drugs. Not the other way around. I didn’t start using when I became homeless. I became homeless when I started using again after getting out of prison for the third time.

I have been in recovery since that arrest. At forty years old, after nearly thirty years in and out of institutions, I finally got to work. Discipline became my friend. I asked hard questions—of myself and others caught in the same cycle. Almost everyone I spoke with in jails, treatment programs, and on the streets told me the same thing: they hated the lives they were living. But where were we supposed to learn to live differently?

After getting clean, I went to work for agencies claiming they helped people like me. Working in my first housing first building, I watched very intelligent, capable women destroy their lives in what I came to recognize as a den of destruction. With enough agency training, I started believing what they told me—that these women were different than me. Incapable of owning their lives.

That was a lie. A well-intentioned lie that leads to death.

We need truth over comfort. Life over death.

A couple of weeks ago on November 2nd, it was the tenth anniversary of Dow Constantine and Mayor Ed Murray declaring homelessness a state of emergency. At that time, just over 10,000 people were counted as homeless in King County, with about 3,800 living unsheltered. Today, a decade later, that number has exploded to over 16,800 people experiencing homelessness, with nearly 10,000 living on the streets—an increase of 68% overall and a staggering 160% increase in unsheltered homelessness.

Let me say that again. Since declaring an emergency, homelessness has nearly doubled.

The money spent? Washington State has spent over $5 billion on homelessness in the past decade—the current budget adds another $1.8 billion. King County alone purchased fifteen hotels for $268 million, costing over $330,000 per unit in the first year. The Regional Homelessness Authority wants $25 billion more.

These billions aren’t magic money. This comes from you. Every home purchase in Washington includes a $303.50 recording fee—$183 goes to homelessness. King County’s sales tax costs you $19-$66 annually. All while the state faces a $12 billion budget deficit.

This money could be educating and equipping people to improve their own lives. Instead, it funds a system that does for them what they can learn to do for themselves. We’ll keep seeing bodies on the ground, less money in our accounts, and a system that manages death instead of fostering independence.

And what has this money bought? In 2015, when the emergency was declared, 45 homeless people died on our streets. In 2022, that number rose to 310. In 2023, it reached a record 421 deaths. Inside the very buildings purchased to “save lives,” overdose deaths increased 282% between 2020 and 2023.

We are not witnessing compassion. We are funding death.

I want to be clear about something. I am not on medication-assisted treatment. I haven’t been. Meaning I am not addicted to a narcotic while being convinced that I need to remain on it. I do not think that people in these places are different than me. My life is good today. I will have thirteen years clean on December 6th. And I work tirelessly to teach people just like me—homeless, addicted, former criminals—how to take their life back and create lives worth living.

The well-intentioned approach of people who were never addicted has created a human decline unlike any other. And though the nature of drugs has changed, we are still trusting people with no experience, deeming ourselves as unknowing, seeking academic perspective, while we watch people die and nonprofits profit. We have built an entire industry around managing homelessness rather than solving it.

I need to talk about something everyone pretends not to see. There are people reading this right now who know—who absolutely know—that what we’re doing isn’t working. You’ve seen it. You’ve watched it. Maybe you’ve even participated in it because there’s a paycheck attached. You tell yourself it’s complicated. You tell yourself you’re helping. You tell yourself that harm reduction is compassion.

But I’m asking you to reconnect with why you got into this work. To look at what’s actually happening and ask yourself: Is this what I signed up for?

Here’s a question we never ask: Have we asked the people we’re serving if death is what they’re seeking? Because that’s what we’re funding. When we hand someone an apartment with no expectation of recovery while they’re actively using fentanyl, are we asking them if this is the outcome they want? Or are we making that decision for them, assuming they’re incapable of anything more?

The people dying deserve to be asked what they actually want for their lives. Not what we think is realistic for them. What they want.

I’m not asking you to feel ashamed. I’m asking you to reconnect with your integrity. To look honestly at the outcomes and ask if this aligns with why you chose this work. Because I believe most people in this system got into it wanting to truly help. Somewhere along the way, the system itself became more important than the people it was meant to serve.

We need to shift our focus to flourishing. To evolve away from an industry of human destruction where sick people equal job security. When voters and community members think someone is accessing services, they believe that person is actually getting help—help to overcome, not help to persist. That must be what we’re doing. Real help. Help that leads somewhere other than death.

There is another way. It starts with accountability. It starts with expecting people to be capable of change because they are. It starts with understanding that real compassion sometimes looks like boundaries, expectations, and yes, even consequences. It starts with treatment that addresses the root cause rather than managing symptoms. It starts with believing that the person dying on the street corner is capable of the same transformation I experienced.

My life changed because someone intervened. Because I was arrested. Because I faced consequences. Because in that jail cell, I had to decide if I wanted to die or if I wanted to live. No one rescued me from that decision. No one made it comfortable for me to keep using. That intervention—that refusal to enable my destruction—saved my life.

After working in the industry until I felt like I was killing my friends, I walked away. I became grateful for law enforcement and my time behind bars. Grateful for the intervention that led to my freedom.

The world we live in is a big contradiction and we are walking over bodies while denying that we see destruction. We’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per person while claiming we can’t afford treatment programs. We’re building bureaucracies that employ thousands while the people they’re meant to serve die in the apartments we provide. We’re calling it compassion when it’s actually abandonment dressed up in progressive language.

Let’s change the narrative. Let’s redefine compassion and support the progression of human life based on flourishing, not handing out death. Let’s expect more from people because they’re capable of more. Let’s invest in treatment, recovery, and accountability instead of permanent dependency. Let’s listen to the voices of people who have actually lived this life and found their way out instead of the academics and bureaucrats who’ve built careers on managing misery.

Real solutions require us to do hard things. They require us to tell people the truth even when it’s uncomfortable—that they’re capable of more, that their choices matter, that they can change. Real compassion sometimes looks like boundaries, expectations, and yes, even consequences.

Truth over comfort. Life over death.

I am living proof that people can change. That addicts can recover. That criminals can become contributing members of society. That someone who once prayed for death in the streets of Tacoma can build a life worth living and help others do the same.

But that only happened because someone cared enough to intervene. To expect more. To believe I was capable of more.

It’s time we extend that same belief to everyone suffering on our streets. Not by enabling their destruction. But by challenging them, supporting them, and refusing to accept that this is the best they can do.

The ten-year anniversary of the homelessness emergency declaration should be a moment of reckoning. We have spent billions. We have built an entire industry. And the problem has nearly doubled.

That’s not complexity. That’s failure.

And everyone involved knows it. The question is: do you have the courage to say it out loud?

Because the people dying on our streets deserve more than comfortable narratives. They deserve the same chance I got. The same intervention. The same expectation that they are capable of building lives worth living.

I did it. They can too. But only if we stop pretending that what we’re doing is working and start demanding solutions that actually lead to stability, success, and independence.

The right thing is rarely the easy thing. But it’s always the thing that leads to life.

Your silence is agreement. Your participation is endorsement. Your paycheck doesn’t absolve you of responsibility.

It’s time to call this what it is and demand something different. Something real. Something that works. Truth over comfort. Life over death.

The people we’ve failed deserve what saved me: someone who cared enough to tell them the truth and expect them to rise to it.

Choose life. Demand better. Expect more.

Ginny Burton

Clean and sober since December 6, 2012