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Supportive housing gives people who were homeless an apartment with on-site help, paid for with public money. Critics, including the nonprofit We Heart Seattle, say most of it in King County lets residents keep using drugs. The narrower claim behind that holds: residents needn't be sober or in treatment to get or keep a home. Leases still ban drug use.
Permanent supportive housing gives formerly homeless people apartments with on-site services. From 2023 to October 2026, 7 of Seattle's 10 street addresses with the most 911 overdose calls were such buildings, run by the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC) and Plymouth Housing. Per apartment, they drew about 36 times the calls of other large buildings.
From January to October 2026, Seattle firefighters were sent to 3,809 calls for trash fires and illegal open burning, a record for those months. Calls have stayed near this level since 2022. Fires confirmed at tents and RVs fell by about half, so most calls are not confirmed encampment fires.
Seattle's outreach team offers shelter beds to people living outside, mostly when it clears encampments. City reports show about 3 in 4 of its offers were turned down in 2025, and more than 4 in 5 from January to June 2026. The city counts offers, not people, and most refusals were about the kind of shelter offered.
King County and Seattle pay for thousands of apartments for people who were homeless. Critics say the public can't see how many residents die there. The Medical Examiner publishes countywide totals, such as 379 deaths in a broad group of subsidized housing in 2025. No agency we checked regularly publishes deaths by building or provider.
Initiative 638 would limit girls' school sports in Washington to students it defines as biologically female. We checked 44 Seattle Times news stories about it, from January 2025 to October 30, 2026. Of 29 false or slanted statements in the paper's own words, 28 favored the No side. Most stories had no such problem, and quotes the paper didn't check split about evenly.
Viral posts say transgender girls have no athletic advantage in girls' sports. For girls who went through male puberty, the research says otherwise: many school rules require no hormones at all, and where hormones are used, they remove testosterone within months but leave most strength and speed.
So far in 2026, about 1 in 4 people who died of a drug overdose in King County lived in subsidized or supportive housing, up from about 1 in 8 in 2019. An overdose death is one caused by taking too much of a drug. This housing serves people with low incomes, and some of it serves people who were homeless.
Initiative 638, which limits girls' school sports in Washington to biological females, passed on November 3. Supporters fear and opponents hope that lawmakers or courts will reverse it. Neither can do so quickly: repeal is barred until late 2028, changes need two-thirds, and no lawsuit has been filed.
The No campaign's voters' pamphlet argument leads with the warning that Initiative 638 requires genital exams. The Northwest Progressive Institute, which belongs to the coalition opposing I-638, says its unreleased polling shows majority support for the measure until voters hear that kind of detail. The measure lets a girl's own provider rely on genetics or testosterone instead, and the No campaign's own materials name those alternatives.
Gov. Bob Ferguson says Initiative 638, a Washington ballot measure limiting girls' school sports to students it defines as biologically female, would force girls into invasive sex verification exams. It would not. Every girl would need a new, provider-signed statement of her sex, but it can rest on genetics or testosterone, so no invasive exam is required.
After Mississippi's 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act, its 4th-grade reading score on the national NAEP test rose from 209 to 219, above the U.S. average of 214, while California's went from 213 to 212. Mississippi spent $12,324 per pupil in FY2024, among the five lowest states. Studies find the gains are real and credit coaching, teacher training and extra help, though retaining struggling third graders accounts for part of them.
California's Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, grew 77% after inflation from FY2013 to FY2024, the most among peer states, largely through the federally funded ACA expansion. The State Auditor found at least $4 billion in questionable payments from 2014 to 2017, the department declined to recover them, and in 2026 it had not investigated 26,000 high-risk providers. California also cut its uninsured rate more than any peer.
Los Angeles's city homelessness budget grew 9.4-fold from FY2016-17 to FY2023-24 and the county's plan 3.5-fold. The homeless count still rose 56% countywide and 59% in the city from 2016 to 2026. Fewer than one in five people in City-funded interim housing reached permanent housing, and more than half returned to homelessness or unknown destinations. Whether the gap reflects fraud, waste or poor management is left to readers; this check measures spending against results.
The City of Los Angeles budgeted about $139 million for homelessness in 2016 and about $1.3 billion at its FY2023-24 peak; the county's Homeless Initiative plan grew from $259 million to $908 million. Over the same years the homeless count rose 56% countywide and 59% in the city. Counts dipped in 2024 and 2025, mostly on the street, then edged up in 2026, and an independent RAND count found no decline in three key neighborhoods in 2025.
Claims that billions in Los Angeles homelessness money were stolen rest on a 2025 court-ordered assessment that reviewed about $2.3 billion in city funding and could not trace substantial amounts. That is an accounting failure, not a finding of theft. The homelessness fraud cases prosecutors announced in 2026 allege or admit about $10 million diverted, though gaps in LAHSA's books mean larger losses can't be ruled out.
Since 2022, five separate reviewers have issued seven reports finding that Los Angeles and California could not fully track homelessness money or what it achieved: unreliable bed data, $218 million in unused beds, untraceable funds, no complete LAHSA balance sheet, and no current statewide cost and outcome data. The findings describe weak tracking, not proven fraud, and the State Auditor stopped short of listing homelessness as a high-risk area.
California's state spending per resident grew 61% after inflation from FY2012 to FY2024, more than twice the growth in New York, Florida or the U.S. average, while Texas's fell. On homelessness, poverty under the cost-adjusted measure and demographically adjusted test scores, California does not outperform its peers, though its uninsured rate fell the most. Part of its spending growth is federal Medicaid money.
California's per-pupil school spending rose 126% from FY2013 to FY2024, about twice the growth in Texas, Florida, New York or the U.S. Once student demographics are considered, lower-spending Florida, Texas and Mississippi outrank California on national tests. But California's scores fell less than its peers' after 2013, and its spending is middling once labor costs are accounted for.
California's homeless count rose 57% from 2015 to 2025, against 32% nationally, 18% in Texas and a 22% decline in Florida. Nearly two-thirds of homeless Californians sleep outside, the highest share among comparable states. New York's rate is higher, but it shelters almost everyone. Rents and housing supply explain part of the gap; Houston's large decline came with much more federal money per person and cheaper housing.
California's high-speed rail first phase is estimated at $126 billion for about 494 miles, roughly $255 million per mile, about twice Texas Central's estimate and about five times the World Bank's European benchmark. About $15 billion has been spent without passenger service. Cost growth also afflicts other U.S. rail projects, and the Authority has completed about 90 miles of guideway.
Initiative 638 asks a girl's own health care provider to sign a statement verifying her sex, based on any one of anatomy, genetics, or testosterone levels. The text mandates no particular exam or test, and does not rule out a provider relying on what they already know from past care.
A reader asked how much oil the US uses and produces, and why it still buys oil from other countries. In 2025 the US produced more oil and related fuels than it used. It still buys thick, heavy oil, because many US refineries were built to run on it.
Many Washington residents and business groups say the state has become a harder place to do business. Two federal measures back them. Since 2019, Washington starts fewer businesses than it used to compared with the U.S., and its job growth went from leading the nation to trailing it. Big employers are cutting jobs but staying.
