Crosscut is committed to putting a human face on people who are stuck on the margins of Pacific Northwest life. This is so even though the damaging isolation experienced in the invisible ghettos of homelessness and mental illness is a gritty, unsexy topic. It lacks the soft appeal of news stories about the suffering of innocents — helpless children betrayed by poor schools, venerable seniors without proper care, spotless owls, and more.
In addition, the magnitude and intricacy of the problems posed by chronic mental illnesses and homelessness won’t yield to sound-bite solutions, even though such responses can seem awfully attractive when we feel immobilized by tangles of difficulty.
So I appreciate Crosscut for encouraging me and other local writers to contribute in-depth, nuanced articles about the individuals living and moving all around us whom many of us tend to walk past as if they didn’t exist. Please help sustain Crosscut’s community-centered online journalism with your membership donation. The stories and situations of some of our most vulnerable “invisible” neighbors are important for all to read, and they can’t be kept alive in the public eye without your support.
