Kids Could Get Axed in Washington State Budget Cuts

Debates on budget shortfalls are taking a turn for the worse in Washington state this week. Who's on the chopping block? Homeless kids. Human services officials are hurting to find programs to cut and plan to phase out sheltering and outreach for homeless minors in months to come. Bad idea.

Two things are flawed about this proposal.

The premise to start with. Though a combination of cuts and tax hikes are necessary when legislators find themselves toeing the edge of a yawning revenue chasm, it's curious that the hole is all too often filled with food and cash taken from the mouths and hands of the poor. Erring is usually on the minus rather than the plus side. And if you argue that raising taxes ultimately hurts everyone by, um, probably, in the future you see, leading to job cuts, talk to the director of the Washington Sate Budget and Policy Center, Remy Trupin. In a recent story concerning the budget crisis, he cites evidence that "tax increases can be less harmful to families and state economies than deep cuts to services." That a strong safety net leads to greater stability is self-evident.

Why force the helping professions to choose who suffers?

Research shows that passing the buck on youth homelessness will only deepen social crises in the future. That's the second problem with cutting sheltering and outreach for homeless kids: you all but guarantee they'll become homeless adults. As the head of Seattle's Youth Care Melinda Giovengo points out in a moving editorial, "Without services, too many of tonight's homeless youth will plunge into alcohol and substance abuse, crises of mental and physical health, and simple despair. It's not hard to see why. Some will turn to crime to survive. Others will be forced into it, as the child prostitution in this city and beyond attests, to our shame. Some will die." The alternative is simple. She argues, "50 percent of chronically homeless adults were homeless as adolescents - but 93 percent of homeless youth who access services will not be homeless five years later. We know how to stop the flow." These are pretty good odds. Astoundingly good, actually. In layman's terms, this means, roughly, that cutting funding for homeless youth in Washington state is stupid.

So let's review.

Fact: raising taxes helps communities more than service cuts.

Fact: kicking homeless kids to the curb feels less than good.

Fact: Washington state officials acting on behalf of citizens are about to F-up and do just that.

Fact: the only reason they can do this is because the cuts affect people who can't fight back.

Here's the governor's contact info. Your call. And if you decide to tell him about how angry you are about homeless kids getting the short end of the stick, well, that's up to you.

Image: Art courtesy of the Seattle Times