Organized homeless people have been talking to the Committee to End Homelessness since the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness was in the planning stage.  We have been telling them: they have to work for economic justice if they want to end homelessness, and in the meantime people need immediate shelter to stay alive tonight.  Helping homeless people survive tonight is not a distraction from ending homelessness; it is essential to it.

The Ten Year Plan began in 2005 with good intentions.  It went in the direction that paths of good intentions tend to go when they don’t get reality checks.  By 2012, there were more homeless people, and more homeless people outside without shelter, since the Ten Year Plan started, and  over 300 homeless people had died outside or by violence in King County.

We stopped talking to CEHKC.  We began going to their Governing Board meetings with 150-200 people and demanding that they get real.  And we have had an effect.  CEHKC changed its policies to recognize the need and value of emergency shelter as the entry point to the path out of homelessness, and at their November 20th meeting they will announce the intention of getting 1,000 people off the street by summer 2014.

To make this promise real, we must continue to give CEHKC reality checks, and insist they cash them.  Tomorrow morning we will rally in Westlake Park at 7 am, with breakfast and coffee, then at 8 am we will march to occupy the CEHKC Governing Board meeting. Please join us. We all need to pull together to make the promise real.

I will be picking up sandwiches at the SHARE office at 6:15 am, as I do (almost) every Wednesday; this time the sandwiches will be distributed at Westlake Park instead of Steinbrueck Park.  If I can get up that early, you can too!  If you can’t join us at 7 am, march with us at 8.  If you can’t march with us at 8, sit with us at 8:30, at the Governing Board meeting.

At noon, WHEEL/Women in Black will stand vigil for five more homeless people who died outside or by violence.  With these five deaths, we have reached a tragic milestone of  500 people we have stood vigil for since we began in 2000.  We will be asking the people of the Governing Board to stand with us.  We hope they will take this reality check.