Every legislative session in Washington state, a few infamous bills absorb all the time and attention that ordinary citizens can reasonably devote to restraining their government – while still minding the important business of their own lives.
This year, it’s a “millionaires’ tax” (also known as an unconstitutional state income tax), and a “modernization” of law enforcement that would ensure county-elected sheriffs serve at the behest of an unelected state board.
Rightfully, the people are fiercely fighting these bad ideas.
Meanwhile, about 350 other bills quietly passing into law, many of them just as bad. Most of us won’t even know about these laws until we cut ourselves on their sharp edges while minding the important business of our own lives.
Do the citizens of Washington state really need 300-400 new laws governing their lives every single year?
I don’t think so.
As the French economist Frederic Bastiat observed almost two hundred years ago, many of these bills are proof that “the law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy.”
Take House Bill 2266, for example. In the name of helping the homeless, this bill would override local zoning and ordinances and force cities and counties to allow the development of public housing projects in any residential zone.
Those who testified in favor of this bill complained that quite a few cities and counties have put up “roadblocks” to their developments. They say that’s not fair. They seem to believe other citizens should not be free to disagree with their particular ideas about how to help people – ideas which also happen to make some of them quite rich at the expense of those other citizens.
The bill’s supporters are right that many cities and counties work hard to prevent these housing projects from coming to their communities. But that is not because the people in those cities and counties are mean, selfish, NIMBY-ites who don’t care about the needs of others.
No, communities object because they don’t want to open a wormhole to crime, addiction, violence, disorder, and despair in their back yard, which is what too many of these facilities bring.
Why do these projects so often become disasters? Because they are governed by the (legally mandated) philosophy that says helping the homeless means providing them permanent housing with no requirements like sobriety, drug or mental health treatment, and other recovery-based case management.
That’s a terrible philosophy that ignores reality. Right conditions help humans thrive. Every one of us lives daily with reasonable conditions: Go to work if you want to get paid; eat healthy if you want to be healthy; and so on. Most of us would fall apart without such basic structure.
Why treat homeless people as if they don’t have the same ability as everyone else to make consequence-based decisions? Why pretend they don’t need the benefits of accountability as much as you and I do?
Programs to help homeless people can and should be tailored to meet individual needs, and certainly some need more support than others. The Bible provides wise advice on how to address different kinds of needs: “Admonish the idle. Encourage the fainthearted. Help the weak. Be patient with them all.” (2 Thessalonians 5:14)
The modern cry of “let them be housed!” ignores that obvious wisdom. It is false philanthropy.
But there might be a measure of “stupid greed” behind bills like HB 2266 as well. We cannot know anyone’s motives, but we do know there’s a lot of money to be made in the homeless housing business.
Consider: In 2024, the top eight employees at Seattle’s Plymouth Housing development shared $2.3 million in salary and benefits among themselves. In 2023, the CEO of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington (which owns and operates many public housing projects) took home two separate full-time compensation packages from affiliated nonprofits, each worth about $300,000.
Collectively, organizations like these own many millions of dollars’ worth of real estate subsidized by taxpayers.
That naturally raises eyebrows – and a few questions.
HB 2266 is just one of hundreds of bills moving through our state legislature. But this one may be stopped. The session ends March 12, and there’s still time to call your state senator (the bill has already passed the House).
Marsha Michaelis is a research fellow with Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness initiative. Find out more at fixhomelessness.org.
