Derrick Belgarde
CEO, Chief Seattle Club
People living on the streets deserve better. They deserve a safe home and the freedom to live a life of dignity and stability. But instead of policy solutions and funding, the Trump administration wants to criminalize their very existence.
President Donald J. Trump’s executive order seeks to punish jurisdictions that fail to sweep visible homelessness from their streets. This is a cruel act for an administration that has gutted federal funding for housing and homelessness services. The order also calls for involuntary hospitalization and commitment to treatment programs, while simultaneously calling for an end to the Housing First policies that we know bring people with substance use disorder and mental health challenges a greater chance of success.
In Washington state, recent King County research shows that unhoused people visit the emergency room at a far lower rate when given a place to live. Of course it makes sense that people who are housed are more likely to stay sober, to hold down a job, and to live healthier lives. Housing comes first, and then you can bring people the services they need. It isn’t just a policy that helps people on their path to healing, it saves tax dollars.
Housing providers like ours are doing everything we can to find solutions to homelessness. In the wealthiest country in the world, it just shouldn’t be this hard. Unfortunately, too many in our country see homelessness as a failure of the individual and not the system. Unhoused people are seen as criminals that we should fear. We learned nothing from the pandemic, where millions of our neighbors were one paycheck away from eviction and foreclosure.
People living on the streets are no different from us. During my years of addiction, I was one of them. I have felt the cold and damp of a sidewalk. And I am happy to say that with support from my family and community, I am now able to help others along their journey of recovering from addiction and homelessness. I personally know that housing is the center of all healing. I have worked my way through treatment to recovery, and found the missing piece to my long-term health: culture, connection, and ceremony. Far from my Siletz and Chippewa-Cree homelands, I found my healing through the connections to other Native peoples displaced in the city.
Helping others find this kind of cultural healing is at the heart of the work we do at Chief Seattle Club. Centuries of U.S. policy were created to assimilate and eradicate Native peoples, to force us off our ancestral lands and into cities where we were disconnected from our communities and culture. Our unhoused relatives aren’t just looking for a place to live, but a place to belong. One of my mentors once told me that it isn’t just the sweatlodge, or the Sundance, that is a sacred ceremony. It is also sitting and having a cup of coffee and a conversation with another Native person, reconnecting with the community that we once lost that is so important. While we can’t measure this connection through data, we can see it in the long-term success of our Club members who are transformed through reconnecting with their Native community.
Now the progress we’ve made in helping people stabilize is at risk due to the administration’s cuts to federal housing and homelessness programs, behavioral health, nutrition assistance, and Medicaid. Americans on the brink, making it by with the help of our federal safety net, will be at risk of homelessness. The administration isn’t just moving away from the Housing First policies that we know work, but the policies we know keep people housed and off the streets in the first place.
Our work as housing and homelessness providers has become an even greater uphill battle. But it’s one worth fighting because we know that with housing comes healing, not just for our generation, but for the generations that follow.
Derrick Belgarde is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon, and also Chippewa-Cree from Rocky Boy, Montana. Formerly a member of Chief Seattle Club, he is now the Club’s CEO. He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Seattle University.
About Chief Seattle Club
Chief Seattle Club is a Native-led housing and human services agency that is dedicated to the physical and spiritual health of American Indian and Alaska Native people. The organization currently operates four permanent supportive housing facilities throughout King County and is opening a fifth in the fall of 2025. The organization also operates two non-congregate shelters and a Day Center in the Pioneer Square District of downtown Seattle that provides food, housing assistance, legal services, job training, access to health services, and opportunities for cultural community building. Learn more at chiefseattleclub.org/.
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