Seattle is in the grip of a panic over homeless encampments. Who’s panicking? The same people that have panicked over small-lot housing in single-family zones, that panicked over microhousing, and that panicked over buildings in the low-rise zone blocking precious light and air. These are also the people who Councilmember Mike O’Brien has been listening to since he arrived at the City Council in 2010. His first capitulation to the NIMBY mob was a long time ago, in 2010, when he opposed a well-studied suggestion to allow small retail in the low-rise zone. Now O’Brien is asking these same people who he agreed shouldn’t have small houses on small lots next door, or microhousing next door, or tall buildings next door in the low-rise zones to accept homeless encampments next door. What’s going on?

Here’s what former City Council Candidate Michael Maddux wrote about the angry mob assembled last Friday against a more permissive approach to tent encampments.

Listening to public testimony before City Council right now. Substitute “the homeless” for “Muslims,” and basically all of these purported “progressive” Seattleites would be parroting Donald Trump. This is what happens when misinformation is spread through the media, and when people decide that their taxes and parks are more important than permanent shelter – and interim shelter – for those experiencing extreme poverty. That there are folks coming up and saying that people don’t have a right to safe shelter is disgusting.

Ummm. Yes. I’d agree. But where was everyone’s outrage when the same mob more or less assembled with the same arguments against other kinds of housing. I have to admit that I am stunned at people’s short memories and the ease with which they’ll credulously support inconsistent policy from Councilmembers. These things are all related and what is consistent from both O’Brien and encampment opponent Councilmember Tim Burgess is a disdain for people who make their living from providing housing. But whether a person is building townhomes or organizing an encampment, the net benefit is more housing where there isn’t any.

O’Brien is now breathlessly defending people who are living in tents. I agree with his sentiment. I’ve said, more than once, that the City and the community ought to be working with people who have found solutions to their housing challenges. Do I want our parks taken over by tent camps? Of course not. But I think that sweeps simply set these people back, people who have been innovative and smart enough and driven enough to get themselves a tent and collaborate with others to create a safe, dry place to sleep. It makes no sense.

My point here is that if find everyone’s behavior on this and their comments on this issue completely unmoored and without any principle. I’ve listened for years (remember that time that a young pregnant woman was called names and booed in Roosevelt? Were you even there? Do you care?) to this same kind of vitriolic, hateful, and frankly off-base and crazy talk from neighbors for years. It’s been turned against everything from specific project proposals to entire zones in the city. Housing is housing, whether it is an apartment, single-family home, a car, or a tent. It works for someone and meets their needs.

It’s time to hold everyone in the mob accountable. More importantly, while I happen to agree, mostly, with Councilmember O’Brien that our approach to encampments needs to change, he also needs to understand that his and Maddox’s distress at the behavior of the neighbors ought not to be reserved just for their opposition to THIS housing solution. The same reasons he and all of us should support small-lot infill, cottages, microhousing, and more housing of all kinds everywhere are the same reasons we should support the people living in those tents. And the same outrage we feel for the NIMBYs trying to sweep the tents, is the same outrage we ought to have for them when they fight projects, new housing types, and expansion of capacity in single and multifamily zones.

When people, whether they be homeless or if they are builders, come up with solutions to a housing problem we ought to encourage them. Enough red herrings. And let’s turn off the mic on the angry and emotional neighbors (they fear row houses, you know)  who are railing against housing solutions. The Council needs to stop listening to them. And if O’Brien is that outraged, he needs to go back and undo the damage he and his colleagues have done to housing in general while he’s pushing for a humane solution to the encampment problem.