I’ve been going through some old boxes and among other things, I’ve discovered some articles I wrote in the late 1990s. Among the many peculiarities of finding things from the past is the fact that these articles aren’t available electronically. Back then, in order to use these articles I had to cut them out, arrange them on a page, then use a glue stick to put it all together. Then I’d make a photo copy of that, then, yes, fax it to whoever I wanted to see it. I might also use the United States Postal Service and fold up the article and put a stamp. What a hassle!

Yes it was a quaint time. But what isn’t so quaint is that virtually nothing has changed in 20 years except technology. I could have written this article today and it probably wouldn’t be considered out of sync with the times. It was 20 years ago and we had encampments in the Jungle, an improvised housing camp under I-5 and lots of money being proposed for stadium improvements. And back then, we still didn’t know what to do about it.

At the time, I was a neighborhood activist and vice president of the North Beacon Hill Neighborhood Council. About a year later I became a Neighborhood Development Manager (NDM), a job implementing neighborhood plans in the southwest sector of the city. I also had been involved in farmworker housing issues in Olympia. I’m sharing this because, well, it shows that we haven’t come all that far. While I can post articles now on Facebook with a couple of mouse clicks, we still can’t figure out that what we need is more housing of all kinds, in all parts of the city for people of all levels of income. That’s just too damn complicated and hard for City officials.