The Rebranding Trap

When Perception Management Replaces Life Change

On September 18th, Mayor Bruce Harrell announced nearly $40 million in expanded crisis response and community diversion programs in Seattle. As city leaders detailed allocations—millions to expand the CARE Department, $1.2 million more to the ORCA center’s outreach division (the $12 million post-overdose facility whose pilot program achieved just a 1% engagement rate: 100 people received buprenorphine over two years despite close to 10,000 professional overdose reversals), continued investment in harm reduction and Housing First approaches—I raised my hand.

“How much will be spent on abstinence-based opportunities for people seeking to get out of the environment?” I asked. “How much currently goes toward real recovery?”

The room fell silent. Harrell asked if I was with the press.

“I’m with myself,” I replied. “I’m a former social service worker, and when I served hundreds of people in downtown Seattle, more than 90 percent of my clients came to me looking for a way out and couldn’t find one.”

City leaders struggled to respond. They hadn’t prepared for this question. The answer: None of the money was going toward real recovery.

This wasn’t surprising. In July 2025, a federal executive order shifted homelessness policy away from Housing First approaches, centering behavioral health instead. For someone working inside prisons watching these failed approaches destroy lives, this represented potential for real change.

But when threatened with loss of funding, systems don’t transform—they rebrand. Without lived experience, those running these systems can only shift language, not direction. They know what sounds good in grant proposals, not what actually works.

Watch how this plays out: When the executive order explicitly called for ending Housing First policies and redirecting resources from harm reduction programs, a prominent leader in Seattle’s homeless services industry appeared on the Seattle Nice podcast to reframe the threat.

This leader—an architect of Housing First whose organization receives over $30 million annually and who personally received a MacArthur Fellowship worth $625,000 for developing the LEAD program—advised listeners to “read past the scary headlines.” They claimed the order was “not terribly problematic, if maybe not problematic at all.”

Then came the pivot: “We need to define ourselves as largely aligned with the values that this order enunciates. We don’t want to leave people camping in public. We don’t want to foster lifelong drug use with a low ceiling on people’s recovery capacity.”

Read that again. Someone who built their career on harm reduction is now claiming alignment with an order designed to defund their life’s work, insisting they never wanted to foster lifelong drug use despite developing programs that do exactly that by design.

This is how intelligent people preserve failing systems. Programs that enable death continue with fresh marketing: “We’re not doing Housing First—we’re doing accountable housing. We’re not enabling addiction—we’re providing low-barrier support with a focus on recovery.”

When threatened with funding loss, simply claim you’ve been doing what critics wanted all along. Rebrand. Reframe. Maintain the money flow.

Why do leaders hold these positions despite the impact on lives? Follow the money. At the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, the CEO earns $290,000 annually, with the CFO at $285,000—more than double Seattle’s median household income. In programs like co-LEAD, outreach positions command $87,000 to $107,000 annually for roles that involve ordering DoorDash on demand and managing covered areas where clients smoke fentanyl. One employee described it bluntly: drug use happens openly in their rooms. This isn’t support—it’s enablement.

And the “success” metrics? King County’s permanent supportive housing programs retain more than 90% of residents every year on average. But “retained” means clients stay comfortable, not that they’re recovering. These programs require nothing from residents—no sobriety, no job training, no movement toward independence. We’re funding able-bodied people to use drugs on taxpayer dollars rather than serving them at their highest capacity.

But what about actual recovery outcomes? The data tells a devastating story. Initial evaluations of Seattle’s hotel-to-housing programs showed only 20% of participants were still housed six months after placement—an 80% failure rate. More than a third had “unsuccessful exits,” returning to the streets. Meanwhile, harm reduction programs celebrate that 90% retention rate as success, when it simply means people are staying in the system, not getting better.

If you asked me what I needed when I was using, I’d have handed over a laundry list—food, gear, a place to crash. That’s exactly what’s being funded and called “recovery” in Seattle. No wonder retention looks stellar: it’s designed to keep people stuck, not set them free.

More than 90 percent of people I served came seeking escape. They wanted out of the nightmare. But the money flows toward managing crisis, not ending it.

People are capable of so much more than these systems assume. When we supply drugs and safe spaces to use them, we sustain suffering. Meeting people where they are should mean recognizing their potential and providing structure, skills, and support to reach it—not maintaining them in place indefinitely with six-figure salaries protecting the status quo.

Real success can’t be rebranded. It shows through transformation: people getting their lives back, reuniting with families, contributing to communities. Not 90% retention in programs that require nothing. Not 20% still housed after six months. Not leaders earning $290,000 while bodies pile up.

When I worked for Catholic Community Services, I knew what wasn’t contributing to overcoming. Eventually, I left. We need to redirect funding toward programs that create genuine opportunity: abstinence-based treatment, long-term residential programs, vocational training, life skills that teach people to help themselves.

When policy threatens existing funding streams, watch for rebranding. Listen for the language shift. Demand evidence of actual transformation, not comfortable maintenance.

The question is simple: Are we willing to stop accepting rebranding and start demanding real results? Will we invest in human capability, or continue funding comfortable decline while leaders protect their salaries and people die?

To the leaders earning six figures from this system: You have a choice. You can continue rebranding failure to maintain your position, or you can use your wealth, influence, and platform to perpetuate human flourishing instead of personally profiting off human decline. The families burying their loved ones, the children growing up without parents, the communities destroyed by this crisis—they’re counting on you to do the right thing.

The money is there. The infrastructure is there. What’s missing is the courage to redirect both toward actual recovery. Will you be part of the solution, or will you keep polishing the facade while people die behind it?