According to last year’s One Night Count, there was an estimate of 914 people living in their vehicle as a result of inaccessible housing. That number is one-third of the entire population of people experiencing homelessness in Seattle. Council member Mike O’Brien is convening a workgroup to engage on the issues of vehicular living and provide recommendations on policy solutions to address those challenges because of inaccessible housing.
The workgroup includes business leaders, advocates, service providers, and community members with experiences of living in their vehicles. The Vehicular Living Workgroup will be meeting once per week from the second through fifth week of March and will have one additional meeting in late April. Though this work is specific to policy practice, I believe it could be appropriate for any type of social work student: macro in the realm of public policy, mezzo in workgroup functions, and also a micro focus as the work product directly impacts many people experiencing homelessness.
The opportunity could be for a student(s) to attend the meetings and observe this specific political process. The student(s) could also provide some support to the workgroup by doing notetaking and following the workgroup conclusion, I would be happy to invite the student(s) into a meeting with the Council member to discuss their own analysis of the process and provide any feedback to him for his own future policy work. Two of the meetings will be 2 hours, while the other 3 will be one or one and a half hours. All five of the meetings will be located here at City Hall, which is located at 600 4th Ave, Seattle, WA 98104. Workgroup members are currently responding to the Doodle Poll but I will surely send y’all confirmed dates once I have those.
Thank you in advance for helping me connect to students interested in this learning opportunity. Please ask me any questions that you have. And if there are BASW or MSW faculty who you think I should reach out to, you can also let me know.
Jesse Perrin, MSW
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Legislative Aide to Councilmember Mike O’Brien
206-684-8800
