At hour 30 in the emergency room, Daniel, Navy veteran, former submarine engineer, asks through his psychosis, “Am I a good person?” When crisis responders finally call his name, I already know what happens next. Thirty-day stay. Insurance runs out. Discharge to street. No plan.

I know because I’ve spent a year conducting 598 interviews throughout King and Snohomish homelessness ecosystem. What I discovered: a $200 million machine that counts bodies, not souls. A system so fragmented that emergency services, treatment facilities, and housing programs operate in total isolation from each other.

This isn’t about homelessness. It’s about how we built a machine that manufactures human misery, then profits from managing it.

The Black Box

Fifty agencies. Fifty databases that don’t communicat

See Full Page