Treatment & Recovery
A pathway to recovery.
Compassion means helping people recover. Accountability means expecting change and working toward independence.
Our region has spent enormous sums addressing homelessness, yet the number of people living outside remains far too high. One reason is that we too often talk about homelessness as if it has a single cause.
It doesn’t.
Someone who loses a job, faces an unexpected medical bill, or experiences another short-term financial crisis needs help quickly getting back on their feet. We should provide it.
But someone living outside while struggling with severe addiction needs something different: intervention, treatment, recovery support, and ultimately a pathway back toward independence.
Failing to distinguish between these situations has led us to spend more while accepting outcomes that should be unacceptable—for people suffering from addiction and for the communities around them.
Our goal should be clear: help people get healthy, regain stability and autonomy, and move toward independent lives whenever possible.
That requires a real recovery system.
01 - Treatment When People Need It
THE PROBLEM
We don't have enough treatment capacity.
For too many people experiencing serious addiction, treatment isn't readily available when the moment for intervention arrives.
Meanwhile, our region spends heavily on homelessness services and subsidized housing while dedicating far less capacity to the treatment and recovery services necessary to help people leave addiction behind.
Housing matters. But for someone suffering from severe addiction, housing alone is not treatment.
MY SOLUTION
Expand public capacity and use private treatment beds when necessary.
King County should build enough treatment capacity that someone who is ready—or required—to enter treatment does not have to wait weeks for a bed.
That means:
Expand public treatment capacity, particularly residential and intensive treatment.
Contract with qualified private providers when public beds are unavailable.
Shift resources toward recovery when existing homelessness programs consistently fail to produce better outcomes.
Measure success based on whether people stabilize, complete treatment, remain in recovery, and ultimately move toward greater independence.
Treatment should be available when the opportunity for recovery exists—not weeks or months later.
02 - Intervene Earlier
THE PROBLEM
We wait too long to intervene.
Our current system too often cycles people between the street, emergency rooms, jail, shelters, and service providers without creating a meaningful point of intervention.
One example is our broken jail medical-intake process.
When police arrest someone who reports recently ingesting drugs or presents certain medical concerns, officers may have to take that person to a hospital rather than directly to jail. That can consume hours of police time while still doing little to address the underlying addiction.
We need a better option between doing nothing and relying on either an emergency room or jail.
MY SOLUTIONs
Create stabilization centers and fix jail medical intake.
King County should develop stabilization facilities where law enforcement, outreach teams, and other responders can bring people experiencing serious addiction or behavioral-health crises.
These centers should provide:
Immediate medical assessment and stabilization.
Withdrawal management and connection to treatment.
A safe alternative to unnecessary emergency-room stays.
Direct pathways into residential treatment when appropriate.
Coordination with law enforcement when someone has been arrested or presents a public-safety risk.
At the same time, we should ensure the King County Jail has the medical staffing and protocols necessary to safely accept people who can appropriately be booked there.
The goal is simple: intervene sooner, stabilize people faster, and connect them directly to treatment instead of sending them back through the same revolving door.
Know Who Needs Help—and What's Available
Effective intervention also requires much better information.
King County should maintain a privacy-protected, real-time by-name system that allows authorized providers to understand who is repeatedly interacting with homelessness, behavioral-health, emergency, and justice systems.
We should also maintain real-time information about available shelter, stabilization, detox, and treatment beds.
This would help us:
Keep people from falling through the cracks.
Better understand each person's needs and history.
Match people with an available bed faster.
Reduce duplication between providers.
Hold publicly funded organizations accountable for results.
We live in one of the world's leading technology regions. There is no reason our response to one of our greatest humanitarian crises should operate with fragmented information and incomplete visibility into available resources.
03 — Build Sober Recovery Housing
The PRoblem:
Recovery shouldn't mean returning to active drug use.
Low-barrier housing can play an important role in getting people off the street. But it should not be the only housing model we provide.
Someone who has completed treatment or is actively pursuing recovery should not have to return to an environment where drugs are readily available or dealing is tolerated.
That undermines recovery and makes independence harder to achieve.
MY SOLUTIONs
Create substantially more sober recovery housing.
King County should ensure that people pursuing recovery have somewhere safe to live.
That means:
Create dedicated sober housing throughout the county-funded housing system.
Increase sober capacity each year based on demand.
Enforce clear rules against drug dealing in publicly funded housing.
Provide recovery-oriented services and peer support.
Help residents progress from treatment to recovery housing and eventually toward independent living whenever possible.
Housing should support recovery—not make recovery harder.
Create a Real Legal Backstop
Diversion can be an effective alternative to incarceration, particularly for someone's first encounters with the justice system.
But diversion without meaningful accountability cannot become an endless cycle.
Addiction itself should not be treated as a moral failing or simply as a criminal problem. But addiction can contribute to theft, disorder, drug dealing, and other crimes that directly affect the surrounding community.
We need a system that is generous on the front end but accountable when repeated interventions fail.
For repeated drug-related offenses, after earlier opportunities for diversion and voluntary treatment, the justice system should be able to require participation in treatment as an alternative to incarceration, subject to appropriate legal safeguards and individualized assessment.
The principle is:
Diversion first. Treatment whenever possible. Accountability when repeated interventions fail.
We shouldn't abandon people to addiction, and we shouldn't ask communities to endlessly absorb the consequences of untreated addiction.
THE GOAL
This is not about punishing people who are struggling.
It is about refusing to accept permanent addiction, permanent homelessness, or permanent dependence as the best outcome we can offer.
King County should build a system that:
Identifies → Intervenes → Treats → Stabilizes → Supports Recovery → Builds Independence
That is more compassionate for people suffering from addiction, more respectful of our communities, and a better use of public resources.
A DIFFERENT STANDARD FOR KING COUNTY
Practical. Compassionate. Accountable
If you believe government should be ambitious about helping people and equally serious about measuring results, join the campaign.