As a retired teacher from Seattle, five years ago I sold my company in Colorado and returned home determined to "fix" homelessness in our city. Before leaving Colorado, I reached out to the "father" of "Housing First", Sam Tsemberis; a solution strategy that involves no barriers to housing as a necessary first step. Sam was, and continues now to be, a gracious and indispensable mentor in my efforts.  When I first returned to Seattle in 2019, at Sam's direction, I began volunteering for an assortment of homelessness nonprofits. Over the course of that first year I worked with over 23 different organizations, a small fraction of the nearly 250 agencies that are involved in homeless efforts. Working with this wide range of homeless organizations provided good sense of the landscape of policies and strategies that are currently be used to address this problem.

It was apparent to me during this first year of exposure to the world of Seattle's homelessness efforts that there were some glaring deficiencies in our current approaches to the problem. The greatest of these insufficiencies was, and still is, a lack of effective outreach and advocacy for homeless individuals. Homeless individuals are the most disenfranchised people in American society and without genuine connection and support from people who are willing to walk alongside them (advocates) on a path leading to sustainable housing, the chances for success are virtually nonexistent. It is for this purpose of providing homeless advocacy that we created Greenlake Homeless Advocates (GHA).

About the same time as I formed GHA, my daughter, Jane, returned to Seattle from San Francisco, where she had been working as a homeless case manager for several years. In no small part, Jane's work in California was what inspired me to my path. She was instrumental in helping me develop the mission of Greenlake Homeless Advocates: to connect people on the streets with services leading to housing and to walk with then during the entire process. Jane died, nearly two years ago of a drug overdose but, needless to say, is still with in me in this work we do.

Today the work of Greenlake Homeless Advocates centers around two areas:

1. We go out to street encampments that are facing imminent sweeps. At these encampments we connect with the residents and help them navigate the sweep process in order to optimize their outcomes during these difficult and traumatic events.

2. We follow as many sweep displaced campers as we can, either to their new transitional housing facilities or to street relocation sites.