Ending the Homeless Industrial Complex: The Washington State Story

Guest Post by Paul Glumaz

By 2021 when I ran for Seattle City Council, and later in 2022, when I ran for Congress in Seattle’s 7^th Congressional District, it was obvious to me that Seattle was a leading Mecca for the drug addicted homeless. It is a “compassionate” welcoming place, providing free needles, food, free tents, a possible low barrier shelter, maybe some affordable housing. There is practically no criminal enforcement for the crimes addicts commit to procure their drugs while destroying local businesses and neighborhoods.

What amazes me is the intense institutional opposition and hostility toward enforcing the laws on drug possession and trafficking to protect the community and provide a pathway out of hell for the addicted. How is it that Seattle’s voters and residents find the daily destruction of human beings on their streets acceptable? Well, they don’t really. But they’re not organized to defeat those who protect and benefit from this dystopian situation.

A 50 Year Saga of Destruction

How did all this come about? The story begins in the 1980’s with a radical community organizer by the name of Frank Chopp. Over several decades, Frank Chopp built a political machine based on delivering “social justice” to the poor, and marginal elements of society in the form of everything from food, shelters, eventually affordable housing, and much more. Call it “charity” with a class conflict political edge.

A community of “social justice warriors” intertwined with a grant writing industry embedded in a growing number of nonprofits emerged out of this. It oversaw much of the administration of these services without competent auditing and oversight. Gradually this congealed into an organized political force that began to influence electoral outcomes.

Frank Chopp built a political machine out of this. Elected to the Washington State Legislature in 1994, by 1999 he was co-Speaker of the State House. By 2002, Chopp was the Speaker of the Washington State House where he reigned until 2019. Frank Chopp became the most powerful political figure in Washington State history based on his social services delivery machine. This is what dominates Washington State politics today.

In 1983, following the founding of Fremont Public Association, Chopp put together a coalition of 50 agencies which called Coalition for Survival Services. Beginning with an initial grant of $500,000 from the City of Seattle, this Coalition now receives over $100 million annually.

Chopp and his wife Nancy Long, were legendary in their ability to write impressive grants and organize others to set up nonprofits. Chopp’s social services machine intersected the mid-1990’s “reinventing government” movement, which advocated outsourcing government services to nonprofits. Frank Chopp was instrumental in advancing legislation favorable to the formation of nonprofits, especially in the social services sector. He personally served on the boards of over 20 nonprofits, and his associates created many more.

These social service nonprofits feature high salaries for their founders and executives with little government oversight. They are intertwined with local elected administrations and politicians.

The growth of these nonprofits and their power depends on an increasing number of people becoming marginalized. Every hard-core homeless drug addict welcomed into Washington State requires an increasing allocation of tax revenues to service that addict while simultaneously growing the associated social services political machine.

Perplexity AI estimates that there are over 16,800 people who are homeless on any given night in King County. Funding from all sources is estimated at $100,000 per homeless person. That is a lot of services. A large part of that enables chronically homeless drug addicts to expand drug use and crime in neighborhoods.

How Our Present Hell Was Born

There were five major developments of strategic importance that occurred between 2012 and 2020 which led to this result.

First, in 2012, Washington State was the first in the nation to legalize marijuana along with lax enforcement of other drug laws.

Second, in 2013 the Obama-Biden administration’s new system of permanent housing vouchers eliminated treatment as a voucher requirement for drug addicts. That started the whole “housing first” initiative for the drug addicted homeless. “Housing first” is why you see dying drug addicts in subsidized housing dominating the streets and neighborhoods of Seattle now and other communities.

The third development was Seattle’s pioneering use of low barrier shelters and homes. Seattle along with San Francisco were pioneers in this. Low barrier means that drug addicts can continue using drugs in state and private nonprofit subsidized housing. One of the major nonprofits involved in Seattle is Downtown Emergency Service Center which receives $92 million a year. Ten years ago, in 2015, the City of Seattle expanded its support for low barrier shelters following an emergency homelessness declaration.

The fourth, also in 2015, was the dissemination of Gabe Mate’s work, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Mate posits early childhood trauma as leading, through changes in brain chemistry and development, to addictive behaviors in later adulthood. Based on this, Washington State classified drug addiction as a disease, eliminating stigma for drug addiction, and absolving the addict of responsibility for the condition.

IN 2020, the fifth development emerged in the context of the 2020 BLM, CHAZ, CHOP riots. Now, the radical socialist reinterpretation of addiction said it didn’t come from childhood trauma. Instead, it came from racial injustice. Law enforcement efforts to enforce drug laws were cast as police brutality against minorities and the poor. This led to riots and demonstrations demanding the defunding of police departments, the decriminalization of all drugs, and shifting resources to behavior health nonprofits to replace law enforcement. Candidates and proponents of “treatment first” were ostracized as racists and are routinely targeted and harassed.

These views became so pronounced that by 2020 at a King County County/City of Seattle event on Seattle Police’s Law Enforcement Assistance Diversion (LEAD), both then Seattle Attorney, Pete Holmes, and King County Prosecutor, Dan Satterberg, demanded that everyone accept the reality that the war on drugs had been lost and adjust to it.

The result of all these developments is the present disaster of trashed neighborhoods and businesses, rising insurance rates, grocery stores with one or more armed security guards, and an increasing sense of existence in a disintegrating civilization.

The Problem of Good Intentions

So, who profits from all of this? Yes, Frank Chopp’s political machine has raked in both power and money. But that’s not the whole picture. There is a deeper problem spiritually and emotionally among a vast number of decent people, who want to appear to be compassionate and loving to others and themselves, including, regrettably, those addicted to drugs. They are much like the mother who wants to do anything to help a child who is an addict.

But this kind of support only enables the addict to continue using drugs. If a drug addict is being supported, why get treatment? Hard core addicts only get off drugs under two circumstances. The first involves the pain of being a drug addict becoming so great, with death staring the addict in the face, that the addict foregoes drugs to live. The second involves following a treatment program where a new life and purpose emerges which is sufficiently engaging to overcome the addict’s desire for drugs.

No doubt the fear of being labelled a racist tends to increase the desire to appear compassionate. Government subsidized enablement of drug addiction has emptied treatment centers. Why would a drug addict go to a treatment center if they can get drugs?

In June of this year, the most recent development surfaced. In 2021, Washinton State legislatively created a Substance Use Recovery Services Advisory Committee, or SURSAC. They have now recommended creating a state subsidized “buyer’s club” to provide “safer supply” program hard drugs for addicts.

This dystopian dynamic of politically powerful nonprofit-run social services enabling the rise of hordes of homeless drug addicts will destroy any society. Washinton State once featured civilized, relative paradises of communities, with neighborhoods of prosperity amid the most beautiful natural surroundings. It beckoned the world. It now mainly beckons to drug addicts across the nation looking for the best place to die taking drugs. The time for ending the homeless, narcotics, industrial complex is now.

President Trump Rides to the Rescue

On July 24, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled Ending Crime and Disorder on American Streets.

This Executive Order attacks the homeless industrial complex. Some of the key provisions are as follows:

“The Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall take appropriate action to: (i) seek in appropriate cases, the reversal of Federal or State Judicial precedents and termination of consent decrees that impede the U.S. policy of encouraged civil commitment of individuals with mental illness…” (This begins the process of getting those with mental illness into court ordered confinement. It is a prerequisite for dealing with homeless substance abuse disorders as well).
“Fighting Vagrancy on America’s Streets. (a)The Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and the Secretary of Transportation will take immediate steps to assess their discretionary grant programs and determine whether priority for those grants may be given to grantees in States and municipalities that actively meet the below criteria, to the maximum extent permitted by law: (i) enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use; (ii) enforce prohibition on urban camping and loitering; (iii) enforce prohibition on urban squatting; (iv) enforce, and where necessary, adopt, standards that address individuals who are a danger to themselves or others and suffer from serious mental illness or substance use disorder…..through assisted outpatient treatment or by moving them into treatment centers or other appropriate facilities via civil commitment or other available means, to the maximum extent permitted by law.”
“(a) The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take appropriate action to: (i) ensure that discretionary grants issued by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery fund evidence-based programs and do not fund programs that fail to achieve adequate outcomes, including so-called “harm reduction” or safe consumption” efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm…the Attorney General shall review whether such recipients are in violation of Federal law, including 21U.S.C. 856 and bring civil or criminal actions in appropriate cases.”

Will Washington State cooperate with this Executive Order? Doing so will diminish the networks that politically control Washington State. Cooperation by Frank Chopp’s apparatus is unlikely. If Washington’s citizens are to climb out of the hellish landscape which surrounds them, they need to help dismantle the Frank Chopp machine, ending the nightmare on our streets while recovering a once great state.