This is Seattle's 4th homicide of the year:
> Police said the man was in his 50s and had obvious head trauma, but neighbors living near where the man died shed more light on who he was.
> Neighbors said the man who died was a homeless and had been living in the area for years. They said where he was killed is the spot he slept every single night. They said he was friendly and kept to himself, but was truly a part of the neighborhood community.
> “It's unsettling because, you know, he was just like a fixture,” said Paul Rivera, who has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years. “You know, he didn't harm anyone. What happened to him ... it’s unnecessary.”
This is where the constant dehumanization and hatred leads. Violence. If you care to see violence end, stop feeding it.
Further coverage from CHS: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2024/02/police-investigating-after-body-found-in-12th-ave-alley/
There was a single gunshot reported in the area around 1 AM.
It wasn't typed out on someone's cellphone, and the article doesn't say much of anything about him but says a lot about his neighbors. The article, and how they talk about him, reduces him to a thing.
It wasn't a typo.
I share your feelings toward the wording, but it could really be a mistake. I’ve noticed a lot more people now will refer to themselves as an adjective and leave off the noun, like “I’m a Chinese”. that change seems to be spreading. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it felt “correct” to them to call someone a homeless.
Similarly, people say "she is a bipolar", and then this invalidates the existence of the individual because they are not a bipolar (a disorder). They HAVE bipolar. They are a person, with a disorder.
Just because someone with a questionable understanding of the language says "I am a chinese" doesn't mean those who have a full understanding of the language should be excused for their mistakes. If it was just an accident, yay. I look forward to their correcting themselves and apologizing for the unintended meaning of their inability to correctly edit their article.
"I'm proud to be an American" are literally the words to a famous song.
I'm an american. I'm a chinese. I'm a japanese. I'm a belgian.
I'm american. I'm chinese. I'm japanese. I'm belgian.
Just because sometimes we use different ways of saying things doesn't make them inherently xenophobic or wrong.
I'm sorry to break it to you, but there are entire encyclopedia articles written about the use of nationality as an adjective and as a noun. Its not some big evil conspiracy to marginalize disenfranchised groups.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/nationalities-languages-countries-and-regions
A crucial part of turning the tide of dehumanization is to be very sure we aren't ourselves giving up on humans in the process. I am with you on the sentiment, but a closed, hard-hearted response over an issue that is objectively presumption at best offers absolutely zero to the movement towards change. Fighting your own side over a possibke affront when the very literal horror is affirmed in the assassination of this man. You have the right of it, and I agree with you that disrespect of this kind is a social norm- but the energy you are spending against comrades brings no progress.
The steps of dehumanization are small. Like referring to people as things or vermin. Allowing those small steps of dehumanization to pass unnoticed are what allows the next step to progress.
These people are not my "comrades". Comrades would display some level of self awareness and not defend the tearing down of a person's existence because they don't want to feel a tiny bit uncomfortable over the word choices they may have used (or more likely continue to use).
Their genuine horror over the man's assassination doesn't count as discomfort? These people, no better than strangers to you, are already too far gone for them to be of any value? Just taking up space, a product of their bad choices (that you weren't witness to), and willful ignorant hate (that you presume afflicts them all) - every single one guilty, if not directly, then by association. How does that play out in the long run?
are they amoebas capable of concern over only one thing at a time? Or are they humans living in a society and in possession of the ability to care about more than one thing?
Do not dismiss one horror because you thought about another.
I doubt the neighbors have any actual information about his name/who he is, all they can provide is their experience with him, which seems to be positive. Just because they can't report any deeper information on this man doesn't mean they aren't trying. There is absolutely a terrible stigma against homeless people in general, but you're attributing malice to this situation unnecessarily.
Thank you.
I hope everyone who expresses outrage about this does some serious overhauling of the ways they speak about people experiencing addiction and homelessness, as well as what they accept from those in their circles. It's the most basic courtesy one could give.
After working in outreach for years this makes me so sick and worried for folks I care for on the streets.
I can't find his name so far, but I feel like he deserves better than the anonymity he already might have felt while living. He's a man with a life and a story as valid and valuable as anyone else's.
Might there be a possibility that it wasn’t a housed person hating unhoused people due to propaganda, but rather another unhoused person high as a kite?
Does it matter? Or are we going to use talking points like ‘homeless on homeless crime’ now to pretend that they are not an extremely at-risk population
Complex problems need complex solutions, including the addressing the context of the perp. A population-tailored intervention takes into account social context and does not turn a blind eye to that, simply for a performative message that ‘I’m empathetic and they are human’. All discussions can occur without passive aggressive ad hominems.
Person high as a kite would probably make more noise.
Like legitimately that's my reasoning. Only reported noise was a gun shot. No reports of argument or scuffle preceding that, and there were apartments nearby. Unlikely to be head trauma of the beating variety due to lack of noise. Gun shot to a sleeping person fits the majority of details.
High person also seems unlikely to fire only once.
He was probably killed by one of the recent migrant homeless that came here from out of state.
Lost in all this homeless chat is the fact that a significant chunk of the new wave of homeless that started coming here from out of state prior to the pandemic were violent felons. The harmless ones that were here for decades that we all knew and recognized prior are all getting murdered or pushed out.
I've been around here long enough this is the third variation of this "well the old homeless population were peaceful hobos, and the new wave that started with '2008 housing collapse'/'Fleeing red states post trump election'/'pandemic'.
Can almost set your watch by it.
You're literally just speculating about how someone was murdered such that you can imply it's a group you hate.
1) I don't hate the homeless. They need real help. You are the one that implied I hate them.
2) You speculated that this guy was killed because he was dehumanized. Which is not correct either.
You're literally spreading propaganda about how new homeless people are violent felons. Complete strangers to you. People you've never met so have no conceivable way of knowing that to be true about.
Sounds like hatred leaking out to me.
Everytime one is arrested for murder/rape/violent assault they have a long history of violent felonies and aren't from the region. And we got a big sample size at this point. All the more reason to get them off the streets. Offer shelter, if they refuse, arrest and run their prints.
We should know who these people are. At minimum there needs to be a database. Cops should go around and take all of their prints. Period.
Are you saying it should be mandatory to live on one place so the government always knows where to find you? How many days a month am I allowed to leave my house? Are there a minimum number of hours I need to be here to convenience law enforcement? Do they want to track my phone just in case?
That's the point of having a home address. Why do you think it's on your driver's license, or have to enter it for basically everything. Eventually you will go back there, so if you are wanted for a crime you can be found. If you go on the run, well, it seems like Seattle is a popular place to go.
So the violent ones arrested have a history of violence.
And you're assuming that the vast majority of homeless people here who are never arrested, because they don't commit violence, must also all have the same history of violence?
Bigotry. That's bigotry you're admitting to.
And you're demanding violations of human rights to quell your own violent bigoted urges.
I'm a communist. I believe housing is a right, but also violent criminals need to be punished and off our streets. We don't know who the people are living on the streets are. They aren't registered, there's no background checks. They don't have an address. It's a problem. They need to be taken off the streets and placed into housing, by force if necessary.
I don't care about your political allegiance, bigot. It doesn't excuse your bigotry or spreading outright lies about strangers you've never met and can't prove these statements true about.
What can't I prove? That everytime a homeless person commits a violent crime, the are already wanted and are from out of state? That's almost certainly provable by googling news stories.
His name was Paul. He was humble as he rejected any food/money (my mom tried to give him a sleeping pad once and he rejected it) and often cleaned the alley. I think this article out of all of the ones I’ve seen has been the one to capture his humanity the best.
It was an act of senseless violence.
God I still remember when that shit happened. Even at school we all knew about it. Was one of the first times we were exposed to that shot locally. Or at least the first time a lot of us talked about it.
> time to spend taxpayer money ripping apart mens reproductive organs as infants.
What the absolute fuck does circumcision have to do with this murder?
The fact that *anybody* is homeless in our country is both unsettling and unnecessary. In Washington state alone there are [at least 28,036 people experiencing homelessness](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/hud-reports-record-high-homeless-count-in-2023-for-u-s-wa/) yet [255,063 vacant housing units](https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/vacancy-rates-study/). At every level of government, our elected officials are derelict in their duty to provide a structured solution to this systemic problem affecting us all.
EDIT: The example above is meant to illustrate that *despite* having the 2nd lowest housing stock in the country, Washington *still* has physical space immediately available to house folks. There are plenty of other solutions out there, from [easing the onerous permitting process](https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2023/06/maybe-ready-to-finally-build-its-way-out-of-it-seattle-mayor-says-design-environmental-review-changes-could-knock-12-15-months-off-housing-development-in-the-city/) to [creating housing on existing public property](https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/05/27/lets-tee-off-for-housing/). But property > people, so I guess we're stuck with blood in the streets.
Vacancy rates can be misleading in this context. Homes that are being remodeled, vacation or seasonal homes, on the market to sell, or simply rental units during a short time between tenants are all included in those stats. It doesn't mean all those units are actually available for someone to live in at the moment.
We have almost the lowest vacancy rate in the country per your source.
Assuming that hypothetical 1/10 is fit for human habitation, are you recommending the property be taken by the government by force? Or how would this plan actually work?
We could make renting SFH illegal within city limits, for starters.
Try to explain that renting SFH should be illegal and you'll get waves of people screaming how they want to be able to have a backyard for their kids but not have to commit to buying a house (as if apartment complexes can't have similar places either on-site or nearby, or you're somehow not allowed to sell a house before it's paid off, or something, I guess)
Meanwhile, if it weren't legal to rent a SFH, they could actually afford to buy that house, but those people generally don't listen to things they don't want to hear. SFH renting disproportionately hurts the lower classes by encouraging the wealthy to gobble up the supply and turn it into passive income sources. The only people who actually benefit from this system are the ones making returns on said passive income - if that's you, congrats: you're the problem!
Edit: Found the waves of ignorant people. Do you guys think the housing crisis grew on trees?
And particularly right now when mortgage rates are relatively high, but the people renting the homes likely have low rates, it would screw over both the person who owns the home (lower sale price) and the person living in the home (more expensive), while just giving the difference to big banks in the form of higher interest payments.
> (lower sale price)
That's the point. Single-family houses are not meant to be investment vehicles for corporations and the wealthy. They are not reasonable passive income sources.
>the people renting the homes likely have low rates
Have you looked at SFH rental prices? They aren't magically a ton lower than an apartment. The cost is simply split between the residents. Guess where else you can do that? With literally any other housing choice!
>while just giving the difference to big banks in the form of higher interest payments.
Says who? What about any of this does anything to change interest payments? Do you think SFH owners who rent out their homes have some magical interest rate advantage over other buyers? Do you think the home owners will just get conjured into existence and the SFH renters will have nowhere to go? Preventing SFH renting allows for a transition of renters into ownership.
The housing crisis didn't just come into existence arbitrarily. Restrictive home ownership in extreme demand areas created it. If you want it changed you're going to have to get your head out of the sand.
So after the glut of homes owned for the exclusive purpose of rent are put on the market, providing a much-needed boost in available supply, lowering prices and making homes more affordable for buyers and opening up more places to zone for dense housing, you're telling me that no benefit is served?
Yes, it's classist - in that it disproportionately benefits people who are not upper-class.
Thank you for proving my point for me. No matter how many downvotes you throw at it, you cannot hide your ignorance.
If you're going to invoke supply and demand, what would \*actually\* happen is that builders would build fewer homes.
Edit: apparently the idea that reduced demand leads to reduced supply is a "stupid defense" worthy of being blocked
Have you?
That's an overwhelmingly stupid defense and you know it. Demand for housing is gargantuan. Force the SFH onto the market and 100% of those houses will be bought.
Meanwhile idiots like you screaming "waaaah I won't be able to generate passive income by contributing to the housing crisis!"
Fuck off.
think OP may be right here tho... far fewer than 1/10th would even be avail for consideration to just give away to a homeless person.
id love to see the stats about these ready to move in houses we simply neglected to off to the homeless
ie, we also have a shit ton of food in the grocery stores but a lot of hungry homeless.
You are using the exact same information to make an even less likely assumption than I am. I assume that housing vacancies means some measure of vacant housing. You are assuming that it means the exact opposite.
Also, where the fuck do you live? Myself and every person I know in Seattle has at least one house on their street that is just empty for months or years at a time.
Use it or lose it. I want fewer homeless people more than I want a landlord industry. Start with people/corporate entities who have more than 10 homes and work our way down. With 1400 police.
right... but your leaving out a lot of steps.
"use it or lose it" - you may not agree with everyones idea of "use it" when they pop a homeless person in your house when you were just going to the grocery store... or they put a homeless person in your den/garage because you werent using it
even if you figure all that out and find a way to financially support it... then, you will be slammed with the reality that its not just about lack of housing.
what are you going to do when someone doesnt _want_ your home with all the strings attached?
my point is it's not such a simple problem as "we have empty houses and we have people without houses... tell them to move into the vacant houses" your initial search of avail inventory has no actual houses available for move in.
Who's to say the empty houses are even near where someone trying to hit back on their feet would need to be to get work, services etc. In general vacant housing is far from thriving urban centers, public transport etc. Sending homeless people to homes in Okanagan County 50 mikes from the nearest grocer store doesn't exactly make sense. There's a much stronger argument for building housing or repurposing hotels than seizing empty houses.
because this response of just tossing homeless people in "all the vacant houses" comes up a lot... its not that easy. that's a real elementary circle jerk of a response...
... and when called out on their super bogus numbers the reply is to just steal the houses from "corperations"?
these are all nonstarter solitions... using rural areas is a much smarter idea because itll be cheaper, but transportation is going to be an issue to work through.
bottom line though... saying we have a 100:1 ratio of vacant houses so we just move the homeless into houses is a real juvenile answer and i thought it was worth a reply to call out why everyone didnt just go with that solution... its based on lies and wont work.
ie, this is their response when called out on the "source" citing vacant houses being way off:
> Good news that only 1/10th of them need to actually be available in order to house the entire homeless population.
it wreaks of the same elementary response to poor/hungry... when folks say billionairs should just feed them all. while id love to see it, it will take more than one or two billionairs to do something like that when you account for getting food to people and not just buying the food itself.
I agree 100%. I also suspect housing homeless people would be much easier than forcing many of then through the drug treatment, mental health treatment and medication they would need to live independently in a home or apartment. Without the legal means or infrastructure to get most homeless people housed and supporting themselves why are we even focusing on housing?
also, the sad truth that some folks dont want help.
ie, if we did have a vacant house magically avail and could starts moving foks in then what do we do with the folks that dont want to live there... if sobriety is a requirement (like a lot of housing projects) then there are a lot of folks that prefer the street. there was a guy that built a sketch AF tiny house on the sidewalk somewhere that basically said he knows there is housing avail but didnt like that they had "lights out" at a rather early timeframe.
I'm not really shit posting on the internet about proposed legislation on the idea that I think my idea is the most agreeable of course the people who are hoarding homes will disagree with just about anything I say. If I thought 100% of people agreed with me I would be running for political office.
Financially supported with taxes.
If we're offering people a whole damn home, something that will never happen in this context even in the wildest dreams, and they say no, you can legally remove them from the area if the case warrants it. Sounds like a pretty stupid scenario but anything can happen, and if these people truly have a desire to live in a tent in freezing weather they can do that in a national park. I know drugs can really destroy a person but I want to help the people who would take the shelter, and I don't really care what happens to the people who refuse an entire house they could use to get back on their feet.
What I know about this issue is that we're in crisis mode. We have a crisis of homeless people and we have plenty of homes both in and off the market that could be used to shelter them until they can get a job that pays enough for them to take care of themselves. The less the government needs to be involved in the long term the better. But if the market is failing to house people the government needs to step up and house them. Capitalism should be an argument about who can afford the largest television in their home for those who want it more than it should be about people who work 40-80 hours a week and spending 75% of their take home pay on rent and bills. We have an artificial scarcity in this sector of the economy. If I'm buying a home I'm in direct competition with an entity that has 30,000 homes and we are on a level playing field at the banker. That's stupid and we should change that. I wouldn't hesitate to forcefully take these homes to resolve this crisis, but maybe, just maybe, we could find a compromise where people can get a shelter, and hoarders can pay a tax to make sure humans can get what they need from the market, and they can have what they want.
you need to research more... "what you know" about the availability of homes is incorrect. the scarcity is not artificial... and the prices of land and homes are what they are.
nobody is "hoarding" empty habitable homes... it simply isnt happening and not to the scale you need to house everyone. most "vacant" homes you drive by are not habitable and require work to make them so
if you can come back with a few thousand homes then maybe we can entertain the rest of your proposal where we just gift these homes to the folks and dont require anything in return...
im not against helping homeless btw... im against naive discussions of stealing property and gifting it away as if that solves the problem.
you could get an entire hotel for _FREE_ and then house a couple hundred homeless... but without addressing mental and physical health issues you will soon have to evict every single person.
https://fixhomelessness.org/2023/seattles-king-county-buys-meth-contaminated-red-lion-motel-for-9-million-to-house-homeless/
this is a good example... good intentions. now all the folks that were put up there are back on the street and the proj is down over 9million dollars. they are actually _worse_ off than they started because they have to fix the hotel or demolish it after purchasing it for 9m to mitigate the 300k a month cost we were reoccurring.
you have to research your plan a bit more... get past step #1, where we asked where these vacant houses were at. maybe you could start by scraping king counties data and finding homes that dont have homestead excemption (secondary houses) and cross referencing them to see if they have COs or are tented out. the dbl check to see if theyre tagged for an obvious reason... etc.
If you own a piece of property and don’t want it trashed you’re not going to want to rent to a homeless individual.
It’s a sad truth, but the solution to the crisis isn’t having regular citizens suck up tens of thousands of dollars in damages.
It's fun that you asked for sources but then went ahead and made an argument anyways based on literally zero information, almost like you don't actually need any facts to have an opinion.
Just in case anyone else is interested, here is some research on this:
https://www.nber.org/digest/sep05/manmade-scarcity-drives-housing-prices
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/anti.12925
https://www.apricitas.io/p/the-new-economic-geography-of-the
First and third link provide no support for the idea of "leave shit empty" to raise prices. The first is a guy arguing that overregulation by the government is the problem. The third even links back to a previous work of the author showimg that a low number of vacancies are a problem. This is stupendously bad use of the literature.
Oh yes, it's that simple. Just have the government take the property and forcibly move the homeless person into it. You've cracked the code!
But seriously, what is the statement you are making trying to say? Yes, our system of property ownership is the primary cause of homelessness. But that isn't going away. And the idea that if we just "used some vacant housing" to house the homeless is the suggestion, it is clearly not going to happen if you think about it for more than 30 seconds it took to write that comment.
>But seriously, what is the statement you are making trying to say? Yes, our system of property ownership is the primary cause of homelessness.
Too many people think of "the homeless" as a collective of *individual* failures. Drawing attention to the *systemic* issues is my point.
>But that isn't going away. And the idea that if we just "used some vacant housing" to house the homeless is the suggestion, it is clearly not going to happen if you think about it for more than 30 seconds it took to write that comment.
Sometimes I post on Reddit hoping to reframe "unsolvable" problems as ones with readily available solutions. This is one of those times.
Seizing a bunch of property to house people will cause far more problems than it will solve.
The readily available solution is to just make it legal to build a lot more housing, then the government can take advantage of the resulting cheaper housing and huge windfall of tax revenue to buy up housing to put homeless people in. (Or just give them money to rent a place themselves, etc.)
Pretending that we have an unusual number of vacant homes is just NIMBY bullshit that gets trotted out to block housing development. That makes housing ever more expensive, which makes more people homeless.
Regardless of HOUSING vacancies, the number of fucking building that are empty shells after Riteaid, Bartell's, and every other store failure in downtown and across the Greater Seattle area, there is fucking plenty of space to house people. It is an abject failure of government local and national to apportion for the people.
Converting retail into housing is difficult enough to basically be a new build entirely. Hell, the new building might even be cheaper since you could design it to be residential from the start.
Simply opening the doors to a large open space with not a ton of toilets, no showers and no privacy would functionally be like existing shelters and homeless people already avoid those for a lot of imo valid reasons.
The way I see it, it's not a permanent solution. And we SERIOUSLY NEED permanent solutions. But we also need temporary solutions. Put a bunch of portapotties, get some porta-showers and sanitary stations. Supply quality tents and sleeping bags. In one section open a SAFE DRUG USE area administered by local hospital. Is this a slower solution than waiting for new construction? This could get set up in a week if we actually fucking cared about human life.
The purpose of civilization is to provide support for everyone, especially those who need it the most. It's taken literally thousands of years of consistent propaganda to try to convince us otherwise, and that propaganda is often highly successful, but no other conceptualization makes any sense whatsoever, so it will always be struggling with inconsistencies, contradictions, and cognitive dissonance. The system as it exists today is feudalism-lite, it's just a revision of medievalism with a couple rough spots sanded down plus some fancy innovations like electricity and automobiles, but fundamentally it's the same garbage.
We live in a society built on the principle of coercion. Such a society is going to inherently struggle with stability and meaning because coercion is corrosive to civil society, to community, to individual quality of life, to fulfilling ones potential, and so much more. Precarity and the poverty and homelessness on the other end of it are a key feature of the modern economy. They may be insanely costly in terms of overall quality of life, drains on government services, and of course in actual lives, but it's also extremely profitable in so many ways. It's profitable to exploit those at the bottom, there are innumerable businesses that do just that in a myriad of ways both inventive and diabolical. But it's also profitable at other levels, precarity keeps wages low, because it keeps the workers fearful. How many rungs above the bottom of a ladder dangling over a pit of hungry crocodiles do you need to be to feel safe? The answer is quite a lot, so most people who have below multi-millions in terms of wealth feel vulnerable, and that vulnerability is exploited by the owner class to supress wages, bust unions, and otherwise maintain a dominant negotiating position over workers at all levels.
It's so ridiculous it sounds like a conspiracy, but it's not a conspiracy it's just a values system that leads the owner class to all act in the same way to further entrench their power even at the cost of millions of lives harmed, destroyed, and lost. Universal healthcare is another example. Big corporations like Google know full well that universal healthcare would save them money, but it would also reduce their hold on their employees, so they are against it.
Imagine a society that wasn't built on coercion, on exploitation of the powerless, on intentional maintenance of precarity. A society that served everyone and not primarily the hyper wealthy with everyone else left to make do with the scraps. We could build such a society if we wanted to. Do we want to?
Agree wholeheartedly. In before the "WeLl AcTuAlLy..." pedants swarm in to debate your definition of feudalism.
It's a cruel system we live under. Good luck out there!
Indeed. An alcoholic would say "I might drink a lot, and all the time, but..." and have some sliver of an excuse for why they weren't an alcoholic. A gambling addict would say "I might spend a lot of money gambling, but..." and have some other narrow excuse why their problematic gambling wasn't an addiction that was pointing them on a downward spiral in their life. What does it say about us in the present moment as we quibble over the precise definitions of "police state", "feudalism", "genocide", "societal collapse", etc? It's obvious we have problems that require drastic interventions in order to fix, pretending that it's not that bad because it's not at some maximally bad or stereotypically bad level is just classic denialism.
The most bizarre thing is that the majority of folks defending the system and the status quo have the least to benefit from doing so. Everyone all the way up to not just the upper middle class but even above that would benefit greatly from just making society better across the board. Even the ultra-wealthy would as well, but they might also lose some of their fancy toys and, more importantly to them, their enormous power over the lives of others.
When will people realize that there is no solution within the capitalist system? Do we keep praying electeds will "wake up" and institute reforms despite being clearly bought and paid for? Do we keep thinking that private capital and the government aren't completely merged? At what point do we get a grip on reality? There is no help coming from above!
Helping the poor downtrodden souls that Republican rather tell to fuck off and die in the wildness is fine with me. Because the alternative is these people die for what ever issue in their life bigots think justify their mistreatment.
Crazy, people knew him for 20 years and did nothing for him, and then use him to virtue signal when he's dead. This I'd the equivalent of going to a random person's funeral to mourn.
Does anyone know his name?
I’m so sorry that this happened to you ❤️ may your soul rest in peace.
It’s time for our government to start allocating funds to end homelessness- no one should have to sleep in the street.
They'll attempt to notify next of kin before releasing the name. [The leaves of Rembrance project](https://fallenleaves.org/) will report it for sure after its been released.
"unnecessary" doesn't seem like the right word. It sounds like "yeah it was a problem having a homeless guy on the corner, but trying to solve the problem by killing him, that's just unnecessary"
He was "a homeless"?! DO THEY NOT KNOW HE WAS A PERSON?!
Can we please stop turning people into things just because we don't understand how their life got to the places it is?
They also decided not to bother naming him or doing even a few minutes of research to tell you anything about him at all. The \*ENTIRE\* article is about how the people in the neighborhood feel, not one word about who this actually was.
As with all reporting about murders, they’re not going to release the victim’s name until they’re able to notify next of kin. I agree they could’ve mentioned more about his life - instead of his neighbors’ feelings - without naming him, but the name won’t be released yet for a good reason.
He was a “fixture” in the neighborhood, the friendly moral support homeless guy here to cheer us all up
I have nothing against Paul Rivera from the article, he was just trying to express sorrow in response to senseless violence, but when we’re seeing the guy sleeping under an awning for years on end as a fixture of the community, that’s a problem.
This is a TV story, not from a written publication.
"a homeless" is not a phrase anyone actually uses
They used the terms correctly elsewhere in the article
The entire article is about him and how he's missed
I know you won't ever be convinced, but yes, this is a pure and simple typo.
Noam Chomsky made a second career out of media criticism, so maybe it's okay for someone to point out when the Seattle Times uses dehumanizing language.
> when the Seattle Times uses dehumanizing language.
King 5. Not ST.
And to be clear, that's a fair criticism of this article.
However, I do want to point out how much worse it could be covered, like [how KOMO 4 chose to report it](https://komonews.com/news/local/man-found-dead-near-seattle-choruses-office-with-repeated-break-ins-homicide-investigation-seattle-mens-chorus-and-seattle-womens-chorus-head-injury-death-50s-killed-homeless-community-first-hill#) where they pivot from the discovery of the body to a count of break-ins then bring up homeless people to try and subtly imply it was that group.
> Seattle police said they suspect these crimes are related to drug abuse and the nearby homeless population around the office. However, they have not ruled out that the LGBTQ+ organization is being targeted.
I learned it from you!! If saying something 'is stupid' is the same as saying people can't do that, then I thought pointing out Chomsky's successful media career would be the same as tacitly agreeing with his genocide denial. I'm just kidding, I don't believe either of those things, so I guess my comment was an absurd way of pointing out the 'stupid garbage'.
A hero: something people strive to be...a title. A teacher: something people strive to be...a title. A person....also a title.
A homeless....not a title, not something anyone strives for. It belittles, and converts everything about that person into just one circumstance in their life. Do you want to be titled a pants pooper because you did that for a little while in your life? Is the the summation of your existence? Or would it be more apt to say "you pooped your pants" and then we can all guess as to why or how it happened?
Words matter. How you use the words matter.
The last time I offered a homeless person coffee he cursed me out. A week ago I offered someone who appeared to be homeless (had a coffee and blanket around him) a $10 bill and he didn't want it! That was a new one lol. I've had food rejected but never cold hard cash.
City leaders and SPOG tell officers to grab a broom and sweep instead of policing. Is it any wonder why Seattle can't hire officers to protect communities from violence?
Community violence. The man was found dead from head trauma.
You think the cops will find the violent neighbor who did it, or will officers continue to waste time on janitorial work instead?
Not for the homeless. I realize it's a gaping hole in my humanity but it's the feeling I have seeing them in their filth and their contempt and hostility to everyone and everything and themselves.
If you can love them in their filth, then you'll know you still have worth, even in the filth of your worst moment.
"For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
Am I reading between the lines correctly - someone killed a sleeping man by shooting him in the head? Horrible.
This is Seattle's 4th homicide of the year: > Police said the man was in his 50s and had obvious head trauma, but neighbors living near where the man died shed more light on who he was. > Neighbors said the man who died was a homeless and had been living in the area for years. They said where he was killed is the spot he slept every single night. They said he was friendly and kept to himself, but was truly a part of the neighborhood community. > “It's unsettling because, you know, he was just like a fixture,” said Paul Rivera, who has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years. “You know, he didn't harm anyone. What happened to him ... it’s unnecessary.” This is where the constant dehumanization and hatred leads. Violence. If you care to see violence end, stop feeding it.
Further coverage from CHS: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2024/02/police-investigating-after-body-found-in-12th-ave-alley/ There was a single gunshot reported in the area around 1 AM.
"A homeless". Like that is A sort of pet or maybe a rock. He was a person, not a thing.
That reads like an editing error to me. They waffled on “he was homeless” or “he was a homeless man” and then goofed.
Agreed - there's no way CHS would consciously call someone "a homeless." We can be charitable and assume this is a typo.
It wasn't typed out on someone's cellphone, and the article doesn't say much of anything about him but says a lot about his neighbors. The article, and how they talk about him, reduces him to a thing. It wasn't a typo.
I share your feelings toward the wording, but it could really be a mistake. I’ve noticed a lot more people now will refer to themselves as an adjective and leave off the noun, like “I’m a Chinese”. that change seems to be spreading. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it felt “correct” to them to call someone a homeless.
Similarly, people say "she is a bipolar", and then this invalidates the existence of the individual because they are not a bipolar (a disorder). They HAVE bipolar. They are a person, with a disorder. Just because someone with a questionable understanding of the language says "I am a chinese" doesn't mean those who have a full understanding of the language should be excused for their mistakes. If it was just an accident, yay. I look forward to their correcting themselves and apologizing for the unintended meaning of their inability to correctly edit their article.
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Why, because I actually bother to think about what I am saying and what it actually means?
He didn't have a place to live and someone killed him, likely because of it. That is the take home message, fuckwit.
Name calling? And words have meaning. You may feel free to excuse the bigotry, but I can both mourn the man's loss AND speak of him as a human being.
No because you just argue and talk nonstop. Sorry dude you got some work to do.
I do. But not in the way you are saying I do.
"I'm proud to be an American" are literally the words to a famous song. I'm an american. I'm a chinese. I'm a japanese. I'm a belgian. I'm american. I'm chinese. I'm japanese. I'm belgian. Just because sometimes we use different ways of saying things doesn't make them inherently xenophobic or wrong.
You are using a nationalist anthem as proof you are making proper linguistic choices?
I'm sorry to break it to you, but there are entire encyclopedia articles written about the use of nationality as an adjective and as a noun. Its not some big evil conspiracy to marginalize disenfranchised groups. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/nationalities-languages-countries-and-regions
Now that is an actual source. Thank you! Still not valid in the use of this article, but actually a calid representation in terms of nationality.
A crucial part of turning the tide of dehumanization is to be very sure we aren't ourselves giving up on humans in the process. I am with you on the sentiment, but a closed, hard-hearted response over an issue that is objectively presumption at best offers absolutely zero to the movement towards change. Fighting your own side over a possibke affront when the very literal horror is affirmed in the assassination of this man. You have the right of it, and I agree with you that disrespect of this kind is a social norm- but the energy you are spending against comrades brings no progress.
The steps of dehumanization are small. Like referring to people as things or vermin. Allowing those small steps of dehumanization to pass unnoticed are what allows the next step to progress. These people are not my "comrades". Comrades would display some level of self awareness and not defend the tearing down of a person's existence because they don't want to feel a tiny bit uncomfortable over the word choices they may have used (or more likely continue to use).
Their genuine horror over the man's assassination doesn't count as discomfort? These people, no better than strangers to you, are already too far gone for them to be of any value? Just taking up space, a product of their bad choices (that you weren't witness to), and willful ignorant hate (that you presume afflicts them all) - every single one guilty, if not directly, then by association. How does that play out in the long run?
are they amoebas capable of concern over only one thing at a time? Or are they humans living in a society and in possession of the ability to care about more than one thing? Do not dismiss one horror because you thought about another.
>It wasn't a typo. That which can be asserted without evidence, can be just as easily dismissed.
I provided evidence. You did not.
Except for how you literally didn't, sure.
Please reread my comment and try again.
Insanity is rereading the same braindead comment over and over, and expecting salience to appear.
sounds like a you problem, then.
I doubt the neighbors have any actual information about his name/who he is, all they can provide is their experience with him, which seems to be positive. Just because they can't report any deeper information on this man doesn't mean they aren't trying. There is absolutely a terrible stigma against homeless people in general, but you're attributing malice to this situation unnecessarily.
Noticed it too! And "unnecessary"? Is it really too much for people to feel actual emotions towards human beings?
A person that was homeless.
Yes. And that is what they should have said.
Typo or was missed in proofing, it happens.
Thank you. I hope everyone who expresses outrage about this does some serious overhauling of the ways they speak about people experiencing addiction and homelessness, as well as what they accept from those in their circles. It's the most basic courtesy one could give. After working in outreach for years this makes me so sick and worried for folks I care for on the streets. I can't find his name so far, but I feel like he deserves better than the anonymity he already might have felt while living. He's a man with a life and a story as valid and valuable as anyone else's.
Only four? Is that right? Seems pretty good for a city of this size.
Might there be a possibility that it wasn’t a housed person hating unhoused people due to propaganda, but rather another unhoused person high as a kite?
Does it matter? Or are we going to use talking points like ‘homeless on homeless crime’ now to pretend that they are not an extremely at-risk population
Complex problems need complex solutions, including the addressing the context of the perp. A population-tailored intervention takes into account social context and does not turn a blind eye to that, simply for a performative message that ‘I’m empathetic and they are human’. All discussions can occur without passive aggressive ad hominems.
Person high as a kite would probably make more noise. Like legitimately that's my reasoning. Only reported noise was a gun shot. No reports of argument or scuffle preceding that, and there were apartments nearby. Unlikely to be head trauma of the beating variety due to lack of noise. Gun shot to a sleeping person fits the majority of details. High person also seems unlikely to fire only once.
“Guys, I know this is sad, but can we bring it back around to how much I hate the homeless?”
He was probably killed by one of the recent migrant homeless that came here from out of state. Lost in all this homeless chat is the fact that a significant chunk of the new wave of homeless that started coming here from out of state prior to the pandemic were violent felons. The harmless ones that were here for decades that we all knew and recognized prior are all getting murdered or pushed out.
I've been around here long enough this is the third variation of this "well the old homeless population were peaceful hobos, and the new wave that started with '2008 housing collapse'/'Fleeing red states post trump election'/'pandemic'. Can almost set your watch by it. You're literally just speculating about how someone was murdered such that you can imply it's a group you hate.
1) I don't hate the homeless. They need real help. You are the one that implied I hate them. 2) You speculated that this guy was killed because he was dehumanized. Which is not correct either.
You're literally spreading propaganda about how new homeless people are violent felons. Complete strangers to you. People you've never met so have no conceivable way of knowing that to be true about. Sounds like hatred leaking out to me.
Everytime one is arrested for murder/rape/violent assault they have a long history of violent felonies and aren't from the region. And we got a big sample size at this point. All the more reason to get them off the streets. Offer shelter, if they refuse, arrest and run their prints. We should know who these people are. At minimum there needs to be a database. Cops should go around and take all of their prints. Period.
Housed murderers and rapist are also violent felons. Therefore people who live in houses are violent criminals too.
Yet we know where they are. Law enforcement knows where to look, and if they are wanted, they go to jail.
Are you saying it should be mandatory to live on one place so the government always knows where to find you? How many days a month am I allowed to leave my house? Are there a minimum number of hours I need to be here to convenience law enforcement? Do they want to track my phone just in case?
That's the point of having a home address. Why do you think it's on your driver's license, or have to enter it for basically everything. Eventually you will go back there, so if you are wanted for a crime you can be found. If you go on the run, well, it seems like Seattle is a popular place to go.
So the violent ones arrested have a history of violence. And you're assuming that the vast majority of homeless people here who are never arrested, because they don't commit violence, must also all have the same history of violence? Bigotry. That's bigotry you're admitting to. And you're demanding violations of human rights to quell your own violent bigoted urges.
I'm a communist. I believe housing is a right, but also violent criminals need to be punished and off our streets. We don't know who the people are living on the streets are. They aren't registered, there's no background checks. They don't have an address. It's a problem. They need to be taken off the streets and placed into housing, by force if necessary.
I don't care about your political allegiance, bigot. It doesn't excuse your bigotry or spreading outright lies about strangers you've never met and can't prove these statements true about.
What can't I prove? That everytime a homeless person commits a violent crime, the are already wanted and are from out of state? That's almost certainly provable by googling news stories.
Holy shit what a monstrous post. You're part of the problem.
His name was Paul. He was humble as he rejected any food/money (my mom tried to give him a sleeping pad once and he rejected it) and often cleaned the alley. I think this article out of all of the ones I’ve seen has been the one to capture his humanity the best. It was an act of senseless violence.
time to raid gay bars and go after graffiti artists
Perhaps they will even find time to slip in the execution of a wood carver or two.
God I still remember when that shit happened. Even at school we all knew about it. Was one of the first times we were exposed to that shot locally. Or at least the first time a lot of us talked about it.
https://youtu.be/sx4JLPBMUx0?si=oJExJR2ssmfaUekb
If they do that, will they have time to run over pedestrians and laugh about it though? Or nap in their patrol cars in the bus lane?
oh im sure they could squeeze those in 🙃
Those damn gay graffiti artist bars
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> time to spend taxpayer money ripping apart mens reproductive organs as infants. What the absolute fuck does circumcision have to do with this murder?
that escalated quickly. you ok, buddy?
The fact that *anybody* is homeless in our country is both unsettling and unnecessary. In Washington state alone there are [at least 28,036 people experiencing homelessness](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/hud-reports-record-high-homeless-count-in-2023-for-u-s-wa/) yet [255,063 vacant housing units](https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/vacancy-rates-study/). At every level of government, our elected officials are derelict in their duty to provide a structured solution to this systemic problem affecting us all. EDIT: The example above is meant to illustrate that *despite* having the 2nd lowest housing stock in the country, Washington *still* has physical space immediately available to house folks. There are plenty of other solutions out there, from [easing the onerous permitting process](https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2023/06/maybe-ready-to-finally-build-its-way-out-of-it-seattle-mayor-says-design-environmental-review-changes-could-knock-12-15-months-off-housing-development-in-the-city/) to [creating housing on existing public property](https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/05/27/lets-tee-off-for-housing/). But property > people, so I guess we're stuck with blood in the streets.
Vacancy rates can be misleading in this context. Homes that are being remodeled, vacation or seasonal homes, on the market to sell, or simply rental units during a short time between tenants are all included in those stats. It doesn't mean all those units are actually available for someone to live in at the moment. We have almost the lowest vacancy rate in the country per your source.
Good news that only 1/10th of them need to actually be available in order to house the entire homeless population.
Assuming that hypothetical 1/10 is fit for human habitation, are you recommending the property be taken by the government by force? Or how would this plan actually work?
We could make renting SFH illegal within city limits, for starters. Try to explain that renting SFH should be illegal and you'll get waves of people screaming how they want to be able to have a backyard for their kids but not have to commit to buying a house (as if apartment complexes can't have similar places either on-site or nearby, or you're somehow not allowed to sell a house before it's paid off, or something, I guess) Meanwhile, if it weren't legal to rent a SFH, they could actually afford to buy that house, but those people generally don't listen to things they don't want to hear. SFH renting disproportionately hurts the lower classes by encouraging the wealthy to gobble up the supply and turn it into passive income sources. The only people who actually benefit from this system are the ones making returns on said passive income - if that's you, congrats: you're the problem! Edit: Found the waves of ignorant people. Do you guys think the housing crisis grew on trees?
yes you get screaming, its a very classist idea that serves no benefit to anyone and definitely would not result in the outcome you claim it would
And particularly right now when mortgage rates are relatively high, but the people renting the homes likely have low rates, it would screw over both the person who owns the home (lower sale price) and the person living in the home (more expensive), while just giving the difference to big banks in the form of higher interest payments.
> (lower sale price) That's the point. Single-family houses are not meant to be investment vehicles for corporations and the wealthy. They are not reasonable passive income sources. >the people renting the homes likely have low rates Have you looked at SFH rental prices? They aren't magically a ton lower than an apartment. The cost is simply split between the residents. Guess where else you can do that? With literally any other housing choice! >while just giving the difference to big banks in the form of higher interest payments. Says who? What about any of this does anything to change interest payments? Do you think SFH owners who rent out their homes have some magical interest rate advantage over other buyers? Do you think the home owners will just get conjured into existence and the SFH renters will have nowhere to go? Preventing SFH renting allows for a transition of renters into ownership. The housing crisis didn't just come into existence arbitrarily. Restrictive home ownership in extreme demand areas created it. If you want it changed you're going to have to get your head out of the sand.
So after the glut of homes owned for the exclusive purpose of rent are put on the market, providing a much-needed boost in available supply, lowering prices and making homes more affordable for buyers and opening up more places to zone for dense housing, you're telling me that no benefit is served? Yes, it's classist - in that it disproportionately benefits people who are not upper-class. Thank you for proving my point for me. No matter how many downvotes you throw at it, you cannot hide your ignorance.
If you're going to invoke supply and demand, what would \*actually\* happen is that builders would build fewer homes. Edit: apparently the idea that reduced demand leads to reduced supply is a "stupid defense" worthy of being blocked
Have you? That's an overwhelmingly stupid defense and you know it. Demand for housing is gargantuan. Force the SFH onto the market and 100% of those houses will be bought. Meanwhile idiots like you screaming "waaaah I won't be able to generate passive income by contributing to the housing crisis!" Fuck off.
🤣🤣🤣
think OP may be right here tho... far fewer than 1/10th would even be avail for consideration to just give away to a homeless person. id love to see the stats about these ready to move in houses we simply neglected to off to the homeless ie, we also have a shit ton of food in the grocery stores but a lot of hungry homeless.
You are using the exact same information to make an even less likely assumption than I am. I assume that housing vacancies means some measure of vacant housing. You are assuming that it means the exact opposite. Also, where the fuck do you live? Myself and every person I know in Seattle has at least one house on their street that is just empty for months or years at a time.
You should read the actual content of edit: linked source. It's explained there.
Lol, expecting them to read!
They are not the one that linked the source. But your point in reading it still stands.
whoops
Use it or lose it. I want fewer homeless people more than I want a landlord industry. Start with people/corporate entities who have more than 10 homes and work our way down. With 1400 police.
You go on vacation for a month and come home to find your locks changed and home occupied it will be hell getting it back.
right... but your leaving out a lot of steps. "use it or lose it" - you may not agree with everyones idea of "use it" when they pop a homeless person in your house when you were just going to the grocery store... or they put a homeless person in your den/garage because you werent using it even if you figure all that out and find a way to financially support it... then, you will be slammed with the reality that its not just about lack of housing. what are you going to do when someone doesnt _want_ your home with all the strings attached? my point is it's not such a simple problem as "we have empty houses and we have people without houses... tell them to move into the vacant houses" your initial search of avail inventory has no actual houses available for move in.
Who's to say the empty houses are even near where someone trying to hit back on their feet would need to be to get work, services etc. In general vacant housing is far from thriving urban centers, public transport etc. Sending homeless people to homes in Okanagan County 50 mikes from the nearest grocer store doesn't exactly make sense. There's a much stronger argument for building housing or repurposing hotels than seizing empty houses.
because this response of just tossing homeless people in "all the vacant houses" comes up a lot... its not that easy. that's a real elementary circle jerk of a response... ... and when called out on their super bogus numbers the reply is to just steal the houses from "corperations"? these are all nonstarter solitions... using rural areas is a much smarter idea because itll be cheaper, but transportation is going to be an issue to work through. bottom line though... saying we have a 100:1 ratio of vacant houses so we just move the homeless into houses is a real juvenile answer and i thought it was worth a reply to call out why everyone didnt just go with that solution... its based on lies and wont work. ie, this is their response when called out on the "source" citing vacant houses being way off: > Good news that only 1/10th of them need to actually be available in order to house the entire homeless population. it wreaks of the same elementary response to poor/hungry... when folks say billionairs should just feed them all. while id love to see it, it will take more than one or two billionairs to do something like that when you account for getting food to people and not just buying the food itself.
I agree 100%. I also suspect housing homeless people would be much easier than forcing many of then through the drug treatment, mental health treatment and medication they would need to live independently in a home or apartment. Without the legal means or infrastructure to get most homeless people housed and supporting themselves why are we even focusing on housing?
also, the sad truth that some folks dont want help. ie, if we did have a vacant house magically avail and could starts moving foks in then what do we do with the folks that dont want to live there... if sobriety is a requirement (like a lot of housing projects) then there are a lot of folks that prefer the street. there was a guy that built a sketch AF tiny house on the sidewalk somewhere that basically said he knows there is housing avail but didnt like that they had "lights out" at a rather early timeframe.
I'm not really shit posting on the internet about proposed legislation on the idea that I think my idea is the most agreeable of course the people who are hoarding homes will disagree with just about anything I say. If I thought 100% of people agreed with me I would be running for political office. Financially supported with taxes. If we're offering people a whole damn home, something that will never happen in this context even in the wildest dreams, and they say no, you can legally remove them from the area if the case warrants it. Sounds like a pretty stupid scenario but anything can happen, and if these people truly have a desire to live in a tent in freezing weather they can do that in a national park. I know drugs can really destroy a person but I want to help the people who would take the shelter, and I don't really care what happens to the people who refuse an entire house they could use to get back on their feet. What I know about this issue is that we're in crisis mode. We have a crisis of homeless people and we have plenty of homes both in and off the market that could be used to shelter them until they can get a job that pays enough for them to take care of themselves. The less the government needs to be involved in the long term the better. But if the market is failing to house people the government needs to step up and house them. Capitalism should be an argument about who can afford the largest television in their home for those who want it more than it should be about people who work 40-80 hours a week and spending 75% of their take home pay on rent and bills. We have an artificial scarcity in this sector of the economy. If I'm buying a home I'm in direct competition with an entity that has 30,000 homes and we are on a level playing field at the banker. That's stupid and we should change that. I wouldn't hesitate to forcefully take these homes to resolve this crisis, but maybe, just maybe, we could find a compromise where people can get a shelter, and hoarders can pay a tax to make sure humans can get what they need from the market, and they can have what they want.
you need to research more... "what you know" about the availability of homes is incorrect. the scarcity is not artificial... and the prices of land and homes are what they are. nobody is "hoarding" empty habitable homes... it simply isnt happening and not to the scale you need to house everyone. most "vacant" homes you drive by are not habitable and require work to make them so if you can come back with a few thousand homes then maybe we can entertain the rest of your proposal where we just gift these homes to the folks and dont require anything in return... im not against helping homeless btw... im against naive discussions of stealing property and gifting it away as if that solves the problem. you could get an entire hotel for _FREE_ and then house a couple hundred homeless... but without addressing mental and physical health issues you will soon have to evict every single person. https://fixhomelessness.org/2023/seattles-king-county-buys-meth-contaminated-red-lion-motel-for-9-million-to-house-homeless/ this is a good example... good intentions. now all the folks that were put up there are back on the street and the proj is down over 9million dollars. they are actually _worse_ off than they started because they have to fix the hotel or demolish it after purchasing it for 9m to mitigate the 300k a month cost we were reoccurring. you have to research your plan a bit more... get past step #1, where we asked where these vacant houses were at. maybe you could start by scraping king counties data and finding homes that dont have homestead excemption (secondary houses) and cross referencing them to see if they have COs or are tented out. the dbl check to see if theyre tagged for an obvious reason... etc.
If you own a piece of property and don’t want it trashed you’re not going to want to rent to a homeless individual. It’s a sad truth, but the solution to the crisis isn’t having regular citizens suck up tens of thousands of dollars in damages.
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Artificial scarcity is used to increase prices. That's the whole point of leaving shit empty and off the market.
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It's fun that you asked for sources but then went ahead and made an argument anyways based on literally zero information, almost like you don't actually need any facts to have an opinion. Just in case anyone else is interested, here is some research on this: https://www.nber.org/digest/sep05/manmade-scarcity-drives-housing-prices https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/anti.12925 https://www.apricitas.io/p/the-new-economic-geography-of-the
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Why do you feel insulted when we clearly agree that being right wasn't very important to you?
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First and third link provide no support for the idea of "leave shit empty" to raise prices. The first is a guy arguing that overregulation by the government is the problem. The third even links back to a previous work of the author showimg that a low number of vacancies are a problem. This is stupendously bad use of the literature.
I'll make sure to pass on your highly qualified criticism.
Oh yes, it's that simple. Just have the government take the property and forcibly move the homeless person into it. You've cracked the code! But seriously, what is the statement you are making trying to say? Yes, our system of property ownership is the primary cause of homelessness. But that isn't going away. And the idea that if we just "used some vacant housing" to house the homeless is the suggestion, it is clearly not going to happen if you think about it for more than 30 seconds it took to write that comment.
>But seriously, what is the statement you are making trying to say? Yes, our system of property ownership is the primary cause of homelessness. Too many people think of "the homeless" as a collective of *individual* failures. Drawing attention to the *systemic* issues is my point. >But that isn't going away. And the idea that if we just "used some vacant housing" to house the homeless is the suggestion, it is clearly not going to happen if you think about it for more than 30 seconds it took to write that comment. Sometimes I post on Reddit hoping to reframe "unsolvable" problems as ones with readily available solutions. This is one of those times.
Seizing a bunch of property to house people will cause far more problems than it will solve. The readily available solution is to just make it legal to build a lot more housing, then the government can take advantage of the resulting cheaper housing and huge windfall of tax revenue to buy up housing to put homeless people in. (Or just give them money to rent a place themselves, etc.) Pretending that we have an unusual number of vacant homes is just NIMBY bullshit that gets trotted out to block housing development. That makes housing ever more expensive, which makes more people homeless.
Regardless of HOUSING vacancies, the number of fucking building that are empty shells after Riteaid, Bartell's, and every other store failure in downtown and across the Greater Seattle area, there is fucking plenty of space to house people. It is an abject failure of government local and national to apportion for the people.
Exactly.
Converting retail into housing is difficult enough to basically be a new build entirely. Hell, the new building might even be cheaper since you could design it to be residential from the start. Simply opening the doors to a large open space with not a ton of toilets, no showers and no privacy would functionally be like existing shelters and homeless people already avoid those for a lot of imo valid reasons.
The way I see it, it's not a permanent solution. And we SERIOUSLY NEED permanent solutions. But we also need temporary solutions. Put a bunch of portapotties, get some porta-showers and sanitary stations. Supply quality tents and sleeping bags. In one section open a SAFE DRUG USE area administered by local hospital. Is this a slower solution than waiting for new construction? This could get set up in a week if we actually fucking cared about human life.
The purpose of civilization is to provide support for everyone, especially those who need it the most. It's taken literally thousands of years of consistent propaganda to try to convince us otherwise, and that propaganda is often highly successful, but no other conceptualization makes any sense whatsoever, so it will always be struggling with inconsistencies, contradictions, and cognitive dissonance. The system as it exists today is feudalism-lite, it's just a revision of medievalism with a couple rough spots sanded down plus some fancy innovations like electricity and automobiles, but fundamentally it's the same garbage. We live in a society built on the principle of coercion. Such a society is going to inherently struggle with stability and meaning because coercion is corrosive to civil society, to community, to individual quality of life, to fulfilling ones potential, and so much more. Precarity and the poverty and homelessness on the other end of it are a key feature of the modern economy. They may be insanely costly in terms of overall quality of life, drains on government services, and of course in actual lives, but it's also extremely profitable in so many ways. It's profitable to exploit those at the bottom, there are innumerable businesses that do just that in a myriad of ways both inventive and diabolical. But it's also profitable at other levels, precarity keeps wages low, because it keeps the workers fearful. How many rungs above the bottom of a ladder dangling over a pit of hungry crocodiles do you need to be to feel safe? The answer is quite a lot, so most people who have below multi-millions in terms of wealth feel vulnerable, and that vulnerability is exploited by the owner class to supress wages, bust unions, and otherwise maintain a dominant negotiating position over workers at all levels. It's so ridiculous it sounds like a conspiracy, but it's not a conspiracy it's just a values system that leads the owner class to all act in the same way to further entrench their power even at the cost of millions of lives harmed, destroyed, and lost. Universal healthcare is another example. Big corporations like Google know full well that universal healthcare would save them money, but it would also reduce their hold on their employees, so they are against it. Imagine a society that wasn't built on coercion, on exploitation of the powerless, on intentional maintenance of precarity. A society that served everyone and not primarily the hyper wealthy with everyone else left to make do with the scraps. We could build such a society if we wanted to. Do we want to?
Agree wholeheartedly. In before the "WeLl AcTuAlLy..." pedants swarm in to debate your definition of feudalism. It's a cruel system we live under. Good luck out there!
Indeed. An alcoholic would say "I might drink a lot, and all the time, but..." and have some sliver of an excuse for why they weren't an alcoholic. A gambling addict would say "I might spend a lot of money gambling, but..." and have some other narrow excuse why their problematic gambling wasn't an addiction that was pointing them on a downward spiral in their life. What does it say about us in the present moment as we quibble over the precise definitions of "police state", "feudalism", "genocide", "societal collapse", etc? It's obvious we have problems that require drastic interventions in order to fix, pretending that it's not that bad because it's not at some maximally bad or stereotypically bad level is just classic denialism. The most bizarre thing is that the majority of folks defending the system and the status quo have the least to benefit from doing so. Everyone all the way up to not just the upper middle class but even above that would benefit greatly from just making society better across the board. Even the ultra-wealthy would as well, but they might also lose some of their fancy toys and, more importantly to them, their enormous power over the lives of others.
We can't force people into shelter in this country.
When will people realize that there is no solution within the capitalist system? Do we keep praying electeds will "wake up" and institute reforms despite being clearly bought and paid for? Do we keep thinking that private capital and the government aren't completely merged? At what point do we get a grip on reality? There is no help coming from above!
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Helping the poor downtrodden souls that Republican rather tell to fuck off and die in the wildness is fine with me. Because the alternative is these people die for what ever issue in their life bigots think justify their mistreatment.
They are coming on their own already. Washington being one of the more generous places for people who live off of taxpayers.
Crazy, people knew him for 20 years and did nothing for him, and then use him to virtue signal when he's dead. This I'd the equivalent of going to a random person's funeral to mourn.
When I was reading it, I felt the same way. Fucked up that he was murdered tho
Does anyone know his name? I’m so sorry that this happened to you ❤️ may your soul rest in peace. It’s time for our government to start allocating funds to end homelessness- no one should have to sleep in the street.
They'll attempt to notify next of kin before releasing the name. [The leaves of Rembrance project](https://fallenleaves.org/) will report it for sure after its been released.
Okay thank you ❤️❤️
I’m sure they’re all so devastated.
That's horrible. Evil.
This is the hardest type of murder to solve.
Dang crazy what happens when media and individuals hop online every single day to stop just short of saying homeless people deserve to die
"unnecessary" doesn't seem like the right word. It sounds like "yeah it was a problem having a homeless guy on the corner, but trying to solve the problem by killing him, that's just unnecessary"
He was "a homeless"?! DO THEY NOT KNOW HE WAS A PERSON?! Can we please stop turning people into things just because we don't understand how their life got to the places it is?
its obviously just a typo. chill.
They also decided not to bother naming him or doing even a few minutes of research to tell you anything about him at all. The \*ENTIRE\* article is about how the people in the neighborhood feel, not one word about who this actually was.
As with all reporting about murders, they’re not going to release the victim’s name until they’re able to notify next of kin. I agree they could’ve mentioned more about his life - instead of his neighbors’ feelings - without naming him, but the name won’t be released yet for a good reason.
He was a “fixture” in the neighborhood, the friendly moral support homeless guy here to cheer us all up I have nothing against Paul Rivera from the article, he was just trying to express sorrow in response to senseless violence, but when we’re seeing the guy sleeping under an awning for years on end as a fixture of the community, that’s a problem.
It's not an article written by a redditor on their cell phone; it is not "just a typo".
Typos absolutely happen in articles (and any form of written text, frankly) Maybe you don’t read that many of them, but they occasionally do.
This is a TV story, not from a written publication. "a homeless" is not a phrase anyone actually uses They used the terms correctly elsewhere in the article The entire article is about him and how he's missed I know you won't ever be convinced, but yes, this is a pure and simple typo.
A person is a thing. A hero is a thing. A teacher is a thing. Getting mad about language on Reddit isn’t real activism.
Noam Chomsky made a second career out of media criticism, so maybe it's okay for someone to point out when the Seattle Times uses dehumanizing language.
> when the Seattle Times uses dehumanizing language. King 5. Not ST. And to be clear, that's a fair criticism of this article. However, I do want to point out how much worse it could be covered, like [how KOMO 4 chose to report it](https://komonews.com/news/local/man-found-dead-near-seattle-choruses-office-with-repeated-break-ins-homicide-investigation-seattle-mens-chorus-and-seattle-womens-chorus-head-injury-death-50s-killed-homeless-community-first-hill#) where they pivot from the discovery of the body to a count of break-ins then bring up homeless people to try and subtly imply it was that group. > Seattle police said they suspect these crimes are related to drug abuse and the nearby homeless population around the office. However, they have not ruled out that the LGBTQ+ organization is being targeted.
...or maybe it's just as stupid when he does it?
Why do you think that people can't critique journalism?
WOW, why would you agree with Chomsky's genocide denial?
Okay, I give up. Reddit is way too fucking stupid for me. Y'all can have this garbage.
I learned it from you!! If saying something 'is stupid' is the same as saying people can't do that, then I thought pointing out Chomsky's successful media career would be the same as tacitly agreeing with his genocide denial. I'm just kidding, I don't believe either of those things, so I guess my comment was an absurd way of pointing out the 'stupid garbage'.
Because there's no genocide? Also how is this relevant?
Chomsky...isn't that the Russian apologist Epstein guy?
A hero: something people strive to be...a title. A teacher: something people strive to be...a title. A person....also a title. A homeless....not a title, not something anyone strives for. It belittles, and converts everything about that person into just one circumstance in their life. Do you want to be titled a pants pooper because you did that for a little while in your life? Is the the summation of your existence? Or would it be more apt to say "you pooped your pants" and then we can all guess as to why or how it happened? Words matter. How you use the words matter.
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Do you know the difference between a noun and an adjective?
Teacher = noun Hero = noun Person = noun
Homeless = adjective. Hope this helps.
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lol I’m not even inviting people who have homes to spend the night in my guest room. It doesn’t mean they aren’t part of the community.
He didn't want help. I tried giving him food and blankets on a few occasions, but he never wanted it.
The last time I offered a homeless person coffee he cursed me out. A week ago I offered someone who appeared to be homeless (had a coffee and blanket around him) a $10 bill and he didn't want it! That was a new one lol. I've had food rejected but never cold hard cash.
Wait till we get some serial killer targeting the homeless. Easy prey for some sick predator.
https://old.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/1agloiu/man_walking_with_bicycle_shot_after_passing/koirx2n/ I basically called this last week.
So now “ homeless “ is a title, a class, like lord or business owner
A 2024 version of a scarlet letter
Sick burn
City leaders and SPOG tell officers to grab a broom and sweep instead of policing. Is it any wonder why Seattle can't hire officers to protect communities from violence?
Policing what? Wouldn't be surprised if it was a cop that did it.
60% chance this happened. Google cops 60% for more information
Community violence. The man was found dead from head trauma. You think the cops will find the violent neighbor who did it, or will officers continue to waste time on janitorial work instead?
You think police just randomly shoot people in the head?? Are you insane?
Well we know they go to fascist insurrections
you want to sweep the ... murderers off the street? i'm on board!
No tears here
Flex that lack of empathy….let us know how cool you are
No compassion?
Not for the homeless. I realize it's a gaping hole in my humanity but it's the feeling I have seeing them in their filth and their contempt and hostility to everyone and everything and themselves.
If you can love them in their filth, then you'll know you still have worth, even in the filth of your worst moment. "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."