About Project Homeless

About Project Homeless

Project Homeless is a Seattle Times initiative that explores and explains the region’s complex, troubling problem of homelessness. With strong watchdog reporting and vivid storytelling, Project Homeless seeks to spotlight what is working, and what is not working, in responding to homelessness. We will also feature solutions-oriented reporting from elsewhere in the country.

The regional homeless response system spends about $200 million a year and touches the lives of tens of thousands of people from the street to permanent supportive housing. Nonetheless, the homeless population rises by the year. The mission of Project Homeless is to pull back the curtain on the response system and see how well it serves the distinct populations of homeless families, youth, veterans and single adults.

The project is modeled after our successful Education Lab, launched in 2013, and Traffic Lab, launched in 2017, which rely on community sponsorship to help The Seattle Times pay for public-service journalism. Project Homeless is supported in part by BECU, Campion Foundation, Raikes Foundation, and Seattle Foundation. Seattle Times editors and reporters operate independently of our funders and maintain full editorial control over Project Homeless content.

The Project Homeless team – editor Molly Harbarger, reporters Greg Kim and Anna Patrick – wants the community’s help in guiding and informing our coverage. We’ll be answering readers’ questions about homelessness, and welcome tips to homeless@seattletimes.com and on Twitter at @timeshomeless.

Meet the Staff

Greg Kim is a Project Homeless reporter. Before working at The Seattle Times, Greg was a software engineer at Amazon in Seattle, where he attended the University of Washington. In 2019, he moved to Bethel, a rural town in Western Alaska, to report for an NPR-affiliate radio station covering environment, public safety, tribal issues, politics, and education. Email Greg.

Anna Patrick is a Project Homeless reporter. Before working at The Seattle Times, Anna worked as a journalist in her home state of West Virginia for five years. She worked as a feature writer at the Charleston Gazette-Mail in Charleston, West Virginia, and then later as a freelancer covering stories throughout Appalachia. Email Anna and follow her on Twitter.

Molly (MJ) Harbarger is the editor of Project Homeless, helping guide and shape coverage of poverty and its intersecting issues at The Seattle Times. Before starting this role in October 2020, MJ spent almost a decade at The Oregonian in Portland covering homelessness, among a host of topics vital to the Pacific Northwest. A Midwesterner at heart, she grew up in Ohio before attending the University of Missouri. Email MJ and follow her on Twitter.

Tell us your story

The Seattle Times Project Homeless is seeking guest columnists to write about their experiences with homelessness. Essays should describe personal stories of living in homelessness, and we'd welcome your ideas on solutions. Columns should be between 300 and 500 words long. We give highest priority to local people writing about local topics and would welcome strong writers who want to become regular guest columnists.

How to submit

  • We prefer submissions to be made by email. To ensure your essay will be considered in the most timely fashion, please send it to Project Homeless engagement editor Anna Patrick: apatrick@seattletimes.com.
  • Please include the text of the submission in the body of the email or in an attached Microsoft Word document. Please do not send files in PDF format.
  • Please include the author’s name and topic in the subject line of the email. We do not publish guest essays written anonymously or under pseudonyms.
  • If possible, include a headshot of the author, minimum size 30 KB, and a biography of 30 words or fewer. If a photo is not available, we can make arrangements to take one.
  • Please include Web URLs for statistics, facts and reports mentioned in your op-ed submission.

Here are some writing guidelines you may find useful

  • This a personal essay: Make it personal. The goal is to help Seattle Times readers understand people who are experiencing or have experienced homelessness.
  • Make a solution-oriented argument and state it forcefully.
  • Be civil. It’s perfectly appropriate to strongly criticize ideas, reasoning or positions. But it is not appropriate to make personal attacks.
  • Be patient. We usually work at least a week in advance.
  • Be willing to submit photos, videos graphs and charts. They help explain the issue and often enhance the visual presentation.
  • Please use common English and not specialized jargon.

Have more questions? Contact Anna Patrick (apatrick@seattletimes.com) or Project Homeless editor Molly Harbarger (mharbarger@seattletimes.com).