Joe Molloy says he never planned to enter politics.
But after moving to Seattle and losing his job during the pandemic, a year ago he found himself evicted and living in a tent encampment. After losing his home, he learned the hard-scrabble skills of what was required to live on the streets from other homeless people, the location of free food banks, and which organisations offered showers and toilets.
At the encampment, he’d speak to other residents and hear stories very similar to his. He became convinced there had to be a better, long-term solution than the dozens of tents pitched alongside his own.
It was from this tent that Molloy launched his unlikely bid for Seattle’s highest office, seeking to unseat the incumbent mayor by tackling the crisis “head-on” and pushing a progressive agenda including everything from a living wage and access to healthcare.
Working out of a shared office space in the city-sanctioned encampment, known at Tent City 3, Molloy is running his campaign via social media and “word of mouth”. He still sleeps in a cot, braving the elements in the famously rainy city where temperatures often fell below freezing this winter.
“People just toughed it out,” he says of life on the street. “It’s hard. It’s not an easy experience.”
Despite never having held public office, Molloy says these struggles make him the best qualified candidate to lead in a city where some 16,000 people are unhoused and the housing crisis is arguably the largest issue. Molloy, 36, does not think much of current mayor, Bruce Harrell, 66, who took office in January 2022, and especially the way he has approached things. According to a recent survey known as a point-in-time count, Seattle has America’s fourth largest homeless population after New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, with the number of unhoused people up 23% from 2022.
And so Molloy decided to challenge Harrell and place his first-hand experiences front and center.
“Sweeps [of homeless people] have been increasing since he’s been in office. Deaths of unsheltered people have increased,” Molloy tells the Guardian in a bookstore located in the university district. Molloy, who speaks with both precision and passion, is dressed for the weather, with a beanie, a thick sweater and a Parka jacket.
“It’s a humanitarian crisis at this point. The situation is heartbreaking, but it’s also embarrassing.”
Tackling misconceptions
Malloy’s path to politics was unconventional: he was born in Dearborn and studied in Michigan, where he received a bachelor’s degree in public administration, and then worked in real estate in Wisconsin. He moved to Seattle five years ago and admits he has no experience of running large organisations.
What makes him unique, he believes, is the ability to make himself a public face of homelessness, something that for many still carries a stigma.
“There are many misconceptions about homelessness,” explains Molloy. “A friend told me [homelessness] is a cardinal fear of so many people, but ‘You’re willing to talk about this openly and not be ashamed and instead use it as a reason to drive change.’”
Molloy says his campaign supports the Seattle Solidarity Budget, a set of progressive policies backed by various grassroots organisations and based on seven main topics, including access to healthcare, affordable housing and a living wage.
Its mission statement says: “We demand the City of Seattle provide the residents of our city with basic guarantees that provide a base standard of living and quality of life for all people in Seattle. The city has prioritised punishment as a means to attempt to mitigate social issues.”
In terms of addressing homelessness, he says a number of things already in place are doing useful work, but there is often a breakdown in communication both between different agencies, and the people they’re intended to help.
He says studies show the most effective way to truly reduce homelessness is a process that helps a person not only find a place to live, but continues to support them after that initial step has been taken.
He says there is also an inherent flaw with the current system. A housing provider, which receives funding from local state and federal sources, for instance, constantly needs a flow of low-income people or those who have been evicted.
“There is a perpetuation of the problem. So we need to focus on transitioning and diverting,” he says.
In terms of his lack of experience, he says he is not so arrogant to think he knows everything that is required to run a city of 750,000 people. But he believes there is already a lot of expertise to tap into.
“There’s a very capable central staff in our city, a very capable network of representatives, of experts to our boards and commissions,” he says. “The most valuable quality anyone representing our city needs is open-mindedness and a willingness to work together.”
He adds: “It also requires a deep understanding of our most critical issues. That’s what I bring that nobody else does.”
Harrell’s office rejected Molloy’s assertions, claiming the mayor had worked with “urgency and compassion to help address immediate needs and root causes”. It said he had swiftly formed a dedicated unit that pulled together the work of a dozen departments.
Over the past three years the city had created 5,161 units of affordable housing and provided thousands of offers for shelter and supportive services, his office said. The mayor had also taken on the challenge of drug deaths with new investments in detox beds, an overdose response team, and emergency responders with buprenorphine to treat both opioid overdoses and withdrawal symptoms. Seattle was the first city in the country with emergency responders to provide the overdose services, the mayor’s office said.
While overdose deaths in Kings county have spiked in recent years, fueled by the fentanyl crisis, hitting a high of 1,339 fatalities in 2023, the mayor’s office points out that overdoses in Seattle fell by 25% in 2024. “While much work is still needed to address this ongoing crisis, these data points help illustrate tangible progress,” his office said in a statement.
‘Homelessness is a policy choice’
Dr Sara Rankin, of Seattle University and a national expert on legal and policy issues about homelessness, says there was no genuine doubt about the primary driver of homelessness.
“It is the housing market – rising housing costs and the lack of affordable housing,” she says, adding that while the city has made some investments in permanent supportive housing, it could do more and still places too much focus on “temporary responses such as emergency shelters”.
“Ultimately, homelessness is a policy choice. We already know many of the evidence-based choices that reduce it and many of the counterproductive choices that fuel it,” she says.
Figures obtained by the alternative news organisation Real Change suggest sweeps of unhoused people and encampments tripled in 2023. Meanwhile, in 2022 – the year Harrell took office – 309 unhoused people died in King county, according to the county medical examiner’s office, a record number that represented a 65% increase from the year before. More than half were the result of fentanyl-related overdoses.
The mayoral election is due to take place in November, with a primary in August. Among those also running are transport activist Katie Wilson, business owner Rachael Savage, military veteran Thaddeus Whelan and artist Ry Armstrong.
In a crowded field, Molloy hopes his unique backstory will help him break through.
“I need to talk about this stuff,” he says. “I need to fight to bring these issues front and center.”
• This article was amended on 27 March 2025. Temperatures fell below freezing over the past winter, not below 20F as the article originally stated.
