Issues

Chronic homelessness in Seattle: A four-part series

It’s been nearly four years since Seattle declared a state of emergency over our city’s homelessness crisis. In that time, we’ve learned there’s not one profile of a person who’s struggling with housing security in our city. They could be a former Olympian. Or the person washing your dishes. Or a veteran who’s been endlessly shuffled through the system. Some of the most difficult folks to reach are those […]

/ December 4, 2019

What other cities are getting right when it comes to fixing homelessness

The Salt Lake City skyline (📷: Flickr) Chronic homelessness is an issue affecting major cities from coast to coast. So it’s understandable that one of the first questions that comes to mind when many Seattleites think about homelessness is, “What have other states done successfully that we aren’t doing to fix this problem?” Kelly Gardner […]

/ November 14, 2019

What causes chronic homelessness in Seattle?

(📷: A McLin/Flickr) Chronic homelessness is one of the most complicated issues facing Seattle and King County. And the difficulty begins with scoping the problem itself.  The first question in our four-part series on chronic homelessness comes from Courtney Stange-Tregear, who asks, “What are the primary causes of *chronic* homelessness as opposed to emergency or […]

/ October 23, 2019

Meet the man behind Seattle’s Somali news source

Runta means “the truth,” in Somali. It’s also the name of a Seattle-based news website, founded by longtime journalist and Somali refugee Mohamud Yussuf. Mohamud started the paper while he was living as a refugee in Nairobi, Kenya, back in 1995. He moved to Seattle a year later, and decided to restart Runta in 2001 […]

/ September 6, 2019

A place to meet and eat fish, sustainably

The Seattle Aquarium is all about interacting with local sea life. You can watch it, you can touch it, you can … eat it? We thought that was a little strange too. So we met up with the aquarium’s executive chef, Molly De Mers, who is in charge of preparing food for the cafe as […]

/ August 28, 2019

What will Seattle’s new waterfront look like?

Have you been down to the central waterfront recently? Amid the traffic, tourists, and bulldozers the viaduct is steadily disappearing. With all that action, it’s easy to miss the new elements that are taking shape at the waterfront. If you listen hard, you can almost hear the waves lapping at the Washington Street Beach, or […]

/ August 16, 2019

From prison to paycheck

Building a life after prison is no easy task. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, formerly incarcerated people are almost ten times more likely to end up homeless, and they face an unemployment rate five times higher than the national average. FareStart is a Seattle organization looking to put a dent in those numbers locally. […]

/ August 9, 2019

Going back to work, and school, at 61

We sat down with Diane Nardi to to talk about the difficulty of going back to work (and school) at age 61. While she has stable housing now, Diane experienced homelessness in the past. That’s part of the reason she’d like to find a position helping other folks navigate housing and health resources. She’s planning […]

/ August 5, 2019

Working full-time while homeless

What does it take to hold down a job while struggling with unstable housing? And, is a job enough to find stability? Joey Pollitt is a longtime Seattleite. He had a place in Belltown for a decade, but lost it in 2005 after he was laid off from his recycling job. After that, Joey picked […]

/ August 5, 2019

Equity, the environment, and you: a Q&A with Sara Cubillos

The Duwamish River in south Seattle (📷: Port of Seattle) Fighting climate change involves more than taking shorter showers and remembering your reusable grocery bags. It’s a systemic crisis that requires a systemic response, and it’s an issue that will affect different communities in disparate ways. That’s where people like Sara Cubillos come in. As […]

/ June 7, 2019