Transcript available here.

There were 310 homeless deaths in 2022 in the Seattle area. A 65% increase over the previous year. Fentanyl-related overdoses accounted for more than half of those deaths. Thirty-five people died from natural causes, ten people died from hypothermia or exposure, and seven died from suicide. 

The average age of death was 48.

Those are all tragically horrible numbers. It’s hard to get your head around them, to even know how to feel. 

When talking about homelessness it is easy to get lost in the numbers. In part because the numbers are staggering, but also, the numbers are what get reported on. We hear more about the numbers than the actual people the numbers are about.

Most of us have not been homeless and have also not spent a great deal of time with someone that has experienced homelessness, meaning, we do not have first hand knowledge about homelessness. Therefore, we rely on second hand knowledge and for the most part, second hand knowledge on homelessness is the negative stereotype. 

Furthermore, without first hand knowledge, we have nothing to push back on, or challenge, the negative stereotype with. For this reason, we readily adopt it and over time believe the views are our own, forgetting they were given to us.

In this episode we want to share about one person who lived chronically homeless in Seattle. Just one of the 310 that passed away in 2022. 

His name is Wes. Wesley Charles Green. He was just 46 years old when he died. The cause of death was listed as - Systemic hypothermia with acute combination of drug intoxication, including fentanyl and methamphetamine. The night Wes died the temperatures were in the 20s and he was found without enough warm clothing. 

In that Wes is no longer here to share about himself, you will be getting to know him through his friendships, defined by the feelings of those that were in his life and got to know him.

“I think the first thing I noticed about Wes, he just catches a person's eye. He's extremely handsome. He catches everybody's eye because he stands out above the rest. But what kept me just continually seeing him and enjoying him and being his friend was that he is a beautiful person inside. You know, I mean, somebody that's beautiful on the outside, and so beautiful on the inside, I find so touching. When I saw him in Fremont, and I was heading to kind of a place where I lived where I was having some troubles and he he said, Brenda here, I've got to show you this, you know, and he got me to slow down. And he took me into the church there. And he took me up the stairway and then he said, we can just sit here and he just let me just relax and not have to talk not have to say anything to him. I mean, he was just a friend, a good friend. He kind of knew when people needed their their moments, especially being out on the street. It's it's it's constant.”
- Wesley’s friend Brenda