Categories: Press
03.18.2016
Retired Executive Director of Seattle’s Downtown Emergency Service Center, passed away March 4th.
Bill Hobson of Seattle’s Downtown Emergency Service Center.
Deputy Director at the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Richard Cho remembers supportive housing champion Bill Hobson. Richard and Bill presented on Housing First at the Network’s 2007 Conference.
On March 4, 2016, Bill Hobson, retired Executive Director of Seattle’s Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), passed away in his home at the age of 76, survived by his family and the legacy of having proven beyond all reasonable doubt that anyone, no matter how ill or troubled, can achieve a new life in a home of their own.
I first met Bill in 2007 on a fact-finding mission I helped organize for several officials from the City of New York to see for ourselves how he had managed to successfully house 75 of the most vulnerable and high-cost “chronic inebriates” in the City of Seattle at their already notorious 1811 Eastlake supportive housing project. This was at a time when the notion of Housing First was still considered experimental—an approach that could only be achieved with significant resources and perhaps for a very limited number of people. We went to the trip expecting to see that Housing First was about providing housing “without conditions.” What we learned from Bill instead was that Housing First was about unconditional love.
Bill has been often quoted as saying that “there is no such thing as a throwaway person.” Those who knew Bill also knew that he had a particular way of speaking that could be both painfully direct and yet full of ironic understatement—something that only someone born and raised in Texas can pull off. Indeed, far from seeing people as not “throwaway,” Bill dedicated his life’s work to elevating the most vulnerable, most forgotten, and most shunned. And while he received national attention for 1811 Eastlake, this project was just one example of so many of Bill’s accomplishments and innovations. Under Bill, DESC grew from a provider of low-demand shelter to one of the most prolific developers and providers of supportive housing. He pioneered the idea of using a Vulnerability Assessment Tool to actively seek out and prioritize for housing people experiencing homelessness with the most severe behavioral health issues and functional challenges. He commissioned research to prove that one’s criminal history had no effect or bearing on one’s ability to be a good tenant. Perhaps more than anyone else, Bill engendered the paradigm shift within the national effort to end homelessness that to end homelessness, the onus should not be on the highest need people to come and seek help; it must be on the providers and systems to bring that help to the highest need people.
Over the years, Bill and I developed a friendship that he would have said was built on mutual respect and admiration, and on occasion, mutual challenge. The truth is that our friendship was not fully mutual in that my respect and admiration for him could not be matched. When Bill accepted an award from the National Alliance to End Homelessness in 2012, I was honored to join him as his special guest at the ceremony. Few people have influenced my orientation in my own work to end homelessness more than Bill Hobson. Bill’s passing leaves a huge chasm in the ongoing struggle to end the tragedy and injustice of homelessness in America. Let us work together to fill this chasm and fulfill Bill’s vision that everyone, including and especially those with the most complex challenges, should have a safe and stable place to call home.