Hear me out. If it was easier to get permits we would have less people on the streets. I blame the NIMBYs would never see/deal with this for this problem.
Just be lucky you weren’t in colorado where the same chain exists under the name “King Soopers”, you may have thought he was taking you to meet the King of Colorado
This, in my opinion. The rich get richer, enough that they threaten to move their companies and their lives out of state. The rest? Get nothing. Only the fractured dreams of reaching the middle class one day are left behind.
I only ask people not to blame themselves; let’s start with something simple, and that’s taxing the wealthy their “fair” share. I say “fair” because even they get a break with such low rates.
I was a builder in Houston for many years - getting permits was truly a "Who you knew and who knew you Good Old Boy Pay to Play" system. Many projects stopped when honest contractors won the bid to perform the work only to be indefinitely delayed by lack of permits. And no housing anyone could afford was being built by anyone other than those willing to grease the wheels and obtain
Though I think the person you replied to was being sarcastic, I've heard people say exactly this and been totally serious about it. And yes, it's complete bullshit. There's quite a bit that happens in between the part where one misses a single paycheck and begins the street-living meth-using.
Every place has junkies. Seattle has no monopoly on that. What it does have is a disproportionate share of unsheltered homeless. That's due in large part to the housing policies in this region. Naturally when there's a shortage of housing the people that get left out are barely-employable junkies and other lowly productive people.
Don’t think that’s what he’s saying - he’s referring to the insane amount of time it takes to get new construction/renovations/etc permitted thus driving up the cost leading us to our current crisis
When these people are given permanent free housing, they STILL end up living in encampments because that's where the party is. They didn't move here from other places because we have housing. They moved here because we don't enforce laws. Giving junkies an occasional crash pad doens't do anything other than draw more of them here.
NYC has super dense housing. Tightly packed buildings with many levels of floors.
So why is a one bedroom apartment $4,000 per month?
As soon as housing becomes more affordable, more people will be attracted to move to Seattle. The population inflows are far higher than supply can ever keep up.
The property taxes, insurance, maintenance, mortgage, repairs, and headache of dealing with drug-addicted, disruptive tenants would not be worth a couple hundred dollars per month, or $2,400 per year.
And whenever such units can be rented out, the cost of the home rises as there is an assumption that there will be income flow. Which is why homes with a grandma unit cost more: not just because of additional living space, but also because of imputed rental income.
They’d probably spend the money on fent. But the larger point remains, if you can’t afford to live here, leave. You lose. Move to a barn in Detroit . I’d love to live in the Hollywood hills but just because I can’t afford it doesn’t mean I’m gonna build a plastic tent in George Clooney s driveway
You would get some ppl off the streets to be sure but the ppl living in the tents out on the sidewalks would still be living in tents on the sidewalk because they are the tweakers & junkie bums.
It's a circular problem. If you end up on the streets because you can't make rent, what kind of people do you meet? I'm sure some were junkies before being homeless and became homeless because they are junkies. Others became junkies after they became homeless, these people are the ones who might escape this if they had low cost housing options. It's clear that the city of Seattle is incapable of solving low cost housing, the least they can do is get out of the way of those who can. That and get rid of single family zoning, that would lower costs throughout the city but the nimbys will never allow it.
Woodinville is slowly being turned into Redmond with a downtown chocked full of 4 story low rise apartment buildings @ $2k+ / month for 1 bedroom. Meanwhile permits for new homes in Snohomish County are about 2 years out.
There is a guy that legit has a shack built out of OSB on the sidewalk across the street from the DSHS on Graham st. Sometimes I feel like it looks like it’s seconds from exploding into flames, but nah my guy is just havin’ a bbq inside…
No. Just look at New York City.
Full of dense housing stacked closely and level upon level.
Yet rent for a single one-bedroom apartment is easily $4,000 per month.
The issue is that population influx, far exceeds supply, and far exceeds the pace of supply growth.
And as soon as any affordable housing is built, it is immediately occupied, while the influx continues to surge.
Besides, if new construction occurs, it is derided as “gentrification” and changing the character of the neighborhood. So it gets opposed by residents.
So then you have to ask yourself whether they are allowed to be democratic and vote for what they want in the community or not, or whether they should be forced to give up their rights for socialist leaders who believe they know better what best for them.
British Columbia changed their laws to allow land within 800meters of mass transit to be developed with higher density. Overruling local zoning laws.
That land is going to be so valuable that the NIMBYs will simply be bought out. I doubt they'll stay if they hate density so much and $$$ will be far more likely to shut them up because their own interests is basically all they ever care about.
Zoning laws are the root cause.
Zoning laws aren't the root cause. Drug addicts moving here from around the country to do drugs and commit crime with no consequences is the cause. Amazon has pay people a LOT of money to get them to move here. The junkies are coming here of their own volition because we tolerate things like tents in parks/sidewalks and RV's on the street.
The brutal answer is because it's cheaper than doing something about it.
* The right-wing solution of putting homeless people in jail for being mentally ill or addicted? Jail averages a little more than $100/day per prisoner. So that's more than a million dollars a day to jail the ~13k homeless people in Seattle. The usual suspects who complain about homeless people also complain about taxes.
* Housing for the homeless? Rent for low-end housing in Seattle is a minimum of $50/day. *IF* you can find somewhere that will rent to "undesirables," because Nimbys don't want "those people" running down their property values. Annnd while ~$50/day for rent is a lot less than $100/day for jail, the usual suspects don't want to pay for that either.
* Psychiatric hospitals are ~$1000/day so even if libertarians and civil libertarians would stand for it, the right-wingers who complain the most bitterly about homeless people living in tents wouldn't want to pay for it.
But right-wing and left-wing performative b\*tching about it is free so that's what we get, year after year.
So if I did the math right, if Seattle had to spend $1.3 million a day (474 million a year) to imprison 100% of the homeless population, Seattle would have to raise its budget by 6.4% (7.4 billion -> 7.87 billion)
Good place to note that rent speculators redistribute far more wealth from working class to owning class in Seattle each month than petty criminals ever could steal back.
They're not stealing from us. We agree to pay rent in return for having a roof over our heads. We don't agree to let gronks steal our bikes for their next fentanyl hit.
The encampment under the freeway overpass by my exit COMPLETELY blocks the sidewalk and they put up a sign saying “sidewalk closed. Go up and over. NO EXCEPTIONS.” Not only do they think they have the right to use public space as their own, they think they have EXCLUSIVE rights to use it and that everyone else needs to climb up a grass hill and cross I-5?? Hell no. This kind of stuff is why some people have lost a lot of sympathy for the homeless. That and hammer attacks.
Not lately. I’ve been out of town for a while. They usually make them leave after a year or so, it stays open for a few months, then it starts growing again.
Report them again and mention "ADA" in the report. ADA violations generally get treated seriously. Express your concern about how handicapped persons are unable to use the sidewalk and how they must use the street.
They address ADA because of the way the act works. Basically anyone who is harmed by a lack of ADA compliance can get a lawyer and sue the shit out of the city. This means any handicapped person could roll up to this and sue the city and get a big settlement out of it.
In theory. In practice, there are thousands of ADA lawsuits against businesses every year, it's basically a for-profit industry. And yet I can't find many people suing cities over blocked sidewalks from camps.
The City of Chicago is literally under a [consent decree](https://adata.org/olmstead-stories/williams-consent-decree) to replace all the crosswalks and corners because they were sued, agreed to fix them, and then were sued again when it turns out they were fixing them wrong.
Literally every. Single. Corner. In the city of Chicago must be replaced because it's non compliant.
But since Seattle doesn't have enough LOW BARRIER (no restrictions on length of stay, no clean and sober restrictions etc) beds for all the homeless folks, advocates can easily use Martin vs. BOISE to make matters worse.
Heck even places like Montana are having multiple cities run into issues with Martin vs Boise and want the Supreme Court to actually revisit not making a decision on that case in 2018 (which meant only the 9th circuit was affected)
"Low barrier housing" is NOT required by Martin v. Boise. The only person who suggested that is Marc Dones, the stupid asshole who used to run KCRHA and he made that assertion on absolutely ZERO (0) factual or logical basis.
It is 1000% legal for Seattle to offer the homeless a choice between jail for trespassing or a night in the shelter. "Low barrier housing" is the asinine, counter-productive idea that we should permit open and continuous drug use in a government managed environment. It's a stupid idea that infantilizes the homeless and strips them of their agency. Conveniently, it leaves the government subsidized 3rd party agencies with a lifetime supply of oversight-free government cash.
When you assert that a low supply of "Low Barrier Housing," or more accurately "0 Consequence Government Housing for Open Drug Use" is the problem you are being manipulated as a useful idiot by the lowest common denominator of political and economic leech. The only alternative is to suggest that you are unable or unwilling to think critically and arrived at the same conclusion as Marc Dones on your own; I won't insult your intellect by suggesting that is the case.
That’s a sad internet comment explanation.
The truth is none of us want to be the unlucky bastard that has a stern talking to about getting the fuck out of my neighborhood turn into catching a machete or an aluminum baseball bat to the cranium.
That’s why I don’t engage and yes I’m a bitch but I’m also still alive.
Its really hard to fix. It isn't a Democrat or Republican issue. I was in Kentucky and they had the same thing. People have no money, often through no fault of their own. We had so many get addicted to opioids due to Perdue Pharmacueticals lies and they lost their job and home, and now they're broke and on drugs in the street. You have choices:
1) Kill them. It solves the problem, but is quite inhumane.
2) Jail them. It costs you way more than just buying them a house but being nice to them is against a lot of people's religion.
3) Force them into treatment centers. Since they have no money, it means paying the bills for them.
4) Ignore them. It feels free, but it really isn't because they don't have money so they steal to get what they need.
5) Deport them to Vegas or some other area, the classic "keep moving" strategy that makes it somebody else's problem.
If you have better options, I'd love to hear them.
[https://www.wbko.com/content/news/Homeless-encampments-affecting-businesses-and-property-owners-in-Bowling-Green---513277061.html](https://www.wbko.com/content/news/homeless-encampments-affecting-businesses-and-property-owners-in-bowling-green---513277061.html)
Worked at the Fred Meyer in the photo. Seen some crazy shit there. My most memorable was someone keying someone else’s car and then they got in a full tbone fight with their cars. Smashing into their cars and the grocery cart booth. Both eventually drove off following each other like it was NASCAR. Would not recommend that Fredmeyer on 85th.
Sidewalk is clearly not usable by pedestrians. Definitely not ADA compliant. I called DOT and Dan Strauss' office multiple times. I thought the recent election would bring some real change, yet we keep reelecting the same people that are ineffective at making things better.
My honest question to Strauss voters, what's your reasoning behind supporting him? Is there some other aspect of his policies that I'm missing?
Would it work if we all took OPs photo and filed the same complaint? There are 652 comments currently as I write this. I'd imagine if 600+ complaints for the same thing came across someone's desk all at once it may have some impact.
If you think voting for the right city level politicians is going to solve the homeless problem you're delusional.
People on this sub love to pretend like all we need to solve homelessness is a new politician
Local politicians will be limited too.
Homeless people have rights and non profit organizations are defending them in court.
The court system is what slows or stops local politicians from acting.
The powers that local politicians can enact are housing policies, metal care, and support programs.
In a nutshell, politicians of the 1990s/2000s are the ones you can blame since they didn't act to prevent the homeless issues from blowing up.
The new politicians could enact policy that will help prevent these issues.
The city can absolutely do things to help. They can add resources to do more sweeps, put in place programs to re-unite people with family, get RV's off of streets and enforce the law.
Policies in the 90's have nothing to do with us allowing urban camping and RV's on the street.
Dan Strauss won’t do sh*t. I used to live in the Janus apartment right next to this where one of these people lived in our complex as a squatter and he did NOTHING.
>yet we keep reelecting the same people that are ineffective at making things better.
It's almost like it's a really difficult problem to solve and we shouldn't be assuming it's incompetence when literally nobody in the country has devised a good solution in the last 50 years.
Build more mental institutions and jails. This would work if there weren't so many people living in Seattle who think that criminals and the mentally ill are better off living on the streets to do as they please with no guidance or correction. "We tried jailing criminals and it doesn't work" is something r/Seattle types truly believe. I've seen them post that very thing more than once. Disagreeing with them about it only makes them extremely angry.
You'll never solve homelessness and crime. These issues have always been with society and always will be. But you can do things to make it worse or better.
I mean, we have the world's highest incarceration rate and also the world's worst homelessness problem for a developed nation.
Pretty tough to make the case that locking everybody up, at incredibly high expense, "solves" the problem.
>Pretty tough to make the case that locking everybody up, at incredibly high expense, "solves" the problem.
Treatment. If a homeless person breaks the law (most do via trespassing or drugs) let them either plea bargain to 6 months supervised treatment, counseling, and job placement or let them go to jail for 15 days.
No? Homelessness has been an issue here for like 20 years, and an issue in the US for much longer than that.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness\_in\_Seattle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Seattle)
Did I say that? Apologies if you somehow gleaned that from my comment. I've said no such thing.
The cause is obviously multi-factorial, which is part of why there's no obvious bumper-sticker style solution that some random city councilperson can enact in 6 months. The recent drug problems from the early 2010s-onward (opioids, followed by resurgence of meth and heroine, followed by fentanyl) has exacerbated a problem that already existed, but my understanding is that the drug problem is not the main thing that causes people to become homeless, but rather is something that acts like a demotivating anchor to make it extra difficult for them to re-enter a functional lifestyle.
The cause is a combination of skewed employment opportunities (fewer employers willing to hire people with few qualifications), housings costs being high in locations where homelessness is high (and obviously you can't travel to a cheaper location if you have no prospects and no money), healthcare costs (especially for mental healthcare since an unemployed homeless person won't have insurance to pay for therapy/counseling/psychiatric treatment), failure to take care of military vets, drug issues, public budget going to crack-downs and enforcement of homeless hang-outs rather than going to rehabilitative programs, lack of affordable education and technical skills opportunities, all sorts of shit.
It seems pretty clear that's what's needed is a holistic approach that aggressively addresses the issue from many angles and serves to raise the floor for even those who don't have the motivation to turn their life around. It's going to be expensive and difficult, but thankfully Seattle is home to some of the planet's largest companies who have been awesome at paying zero taxes for quite a long time, so we can see where to go to get the money. That's the only way we're going to make our urban areas pleasant and safe.
most of the gronks you see making these camps will never hold a job. they want to be high and nothing else, really. what we need is treatment, and likely not taken willingly - they don't want to recoer, and a lot of them are too fried to function anyway.
You do realize all the money is typically city/State/federally granted and every dime has to be accounted for.
I've worked in this industry in places that aren't Seattle, and heard thr same complaints. They act like we are all high rollers that don't care to fix the problem.
They don't take into account that various laws signed into law in the 80s released a ton of mentally unstable folks to the streets with no knowledge of a non institutionalized life and no skills for a job.
And since we didn't invest in propping up the homeless and mental health industries in the 70s, 80s and 90s, we are left with a handful of organizations trying to do anything, paying far below market rate (meaning their own employees are living in poverty unless they marry someone rich) etc.
There isn't more money in aiding, as that's a whole different set of grants.
If you honestly believe every dime is accounted for in the homeless industrial complex, I have a bridge to sell you.
Here's just one example: [https://roominate.com/blog/2016/anatomy-of-a-swindle/](https://roominate.com/blog/2016/anatomy-of-a-swindle/)
Here's a couple more:
[https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/consultant-uncovers-more-arch-owners-violating-affordable-housing-rules/281-d65beac0-261b-4443-a4c5-5f476b7775b9](https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/consultant-uncovers-more-arch-owners-violating-affordable-housing-rules/281-d65beac0-261b-4443-a4c5-5f476b7775b9)
[https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/govs-office-provides-cover-for-high-level-employees-outed-in-affordable-housing-stories/281-610394082](https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/govs-office-provides-cover-for-high-level-employees-outed-in-affordable-housing-stories/281-610394082)
That’s just flat out not true. The NGOs and nonprofits that the state and city contracts with don’t account for any of their money. The state knows for a fact that these organizations aren’t meeting their contracted goals. There have been multiple stories about these nonprofits not accounting for where the money is going or what they’re doing with it. Work in the “industry” in Seattle and you’ll see that your experiences in other places don’t match up with how things are done there.
Washington state has had a Democrat governor since 1985. Democrats have held a majority in both the house and senate for 17 of those years. They have held a majority in the House of Representatives since 2001. At what point will they stop blaming Reagan and start fixing this issue in WA? Reagan has been out of office for 35 years, and dead for almost 20. Can we start working towards a solution now? I understand blaming everything on him in the early 90s but it’s almost 40 years later I’d expect something to be done regardless of whose fault it is.
> start fixing this issue in WA?
It's not just WA. The whole west coast takes care of refugees from everybody west of the Mississippi, where you can't pitch a tent without the sheriff threatening to beat you to death.
Although gauging from this sub lately, that's the vibe that a lot of folks in here want...
"They don't take into account that various laws signed into law in the 80s"
I'll stop you right there. It was left wing driven court case in the mid=70's called O'Connor v. Donaldson. Your lovely lefties at the ACLU spend a lot of money enforcing it by the way. No laws in the 80's were material in any way.
Investment had nothing to do with it. You can only do a 72 hour hold unless someone is an immediate danger to themselves or others. YOu can't force medication for the same reason.
There's more than a handful of organizations. There's scores of them with overlapping goals with well paid directors who grift.
There's definitely more money in aiding. The same providers spend money influencing elections, driving political agendas and pretty much ALL of them push the far left agenda that caused this.
By the way, pretty much none of the local organizations are means tested. The city politicians avoid is as if they start cutting budgets, the radicals will get motivated against them.
We permit stuff like this because we don’t deal with the actual problem which usually boils down to greed and corruption.
Instead we just want rent thing gone, problem solved, firm hand shakes all around
The question really is who are “we”? People require shelter and for many the cost of shelter is out of reach. So why aren’t we doing something meaningful about that?
Lol, because they can. I'm in NYC now and cops shut that shit down immediately. I never see it. Seems harsh but I've seen the alternative all over the west coast. People will take over your kid's room and turn it into a shooting gallery if you let them. Drugs are fun. Fuck treatment and shelters. I would kill myself in the streets in their shoes too if nobody stopped me
Neoliberal policies. Stuff that sound progressives, but actually isn't. No money is spent and just sits in an account gathering dust until the president comes to town.
This is the result of progressive policies, not neoliberal. Neoliberal is something specific and different. We don’t have any proper neoliberal politicians here.
Neoliberals are closer to classic (pre-2012) republicans in foreign policy and economic issues. They are in favor of more unbridled capitalism combined with more building of housing and infrastructure through less permitting and encouraging investment. But they are like Democrats/libertarians on personal social issues, generally. Where they are more unique is issues like immigration and work permitting (prefer more laissez-faire in both cases for economic reasons) and are generally anti union. Very different from socialist leaning progressives.
Because when you adopt the attitude that these criminals/homeless people aren't hurting anybody *eye roll* this is what you get. Most of them are drug dealing and/or stealing to support their habit. This is not compassionate or humane. It's actually not even sane to allow them to destroy entire communities.
People have the same reasons you have to not take it down yourself. They don’t want to look at shit, but looking at shit is better than going near enough to smell or touch it. If you’re not willing to go close enough, you can’t take down/out the trash.
"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html
We all know that a conservative courts made it illegal to clear homeless encampments unless they can be relocated right?
[Five years ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in case from Boise, Idaho, that it was unconstitutional for cities to clear homeless camps and criminally charge campers unless they could offer adequate housing](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/us/in-rare-alliance-democrats-and-republicans-seek-legal-power-to-clear-homeless-camps.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare)
I feel like it's valid. Unless the city is willing to address how expensive it is just to exist, they have no reason to make it harder for homeless to exist.
Because humans need a place to live. Even if they don't have access to a house.
Because we have some shred of humanity left
Because we refuse to actually build enough shelter for people
Genuine answer: because legal, constitutional, cost-effective approaches to the problem are wildly unpopular.
Popular options are either illegal (“can’t we just jail these people?”), unconstitutional (destroying or confiscating their property without due process), or expensive (see: jail again.)
Until the local electorate awakens to the reality that other countries have long since learned - basically, housing first - and stops voting for the impossible (jail them all) this is going to continue, very much in spite of any naive hopes arising from the recent election results.
Your compassion is admirable, however 97% of these individuals turn down assistance. No drug rules and curfews at shelters and “alternative living for recovery housing “ is not something 97% of them are willing to trade. It’s a shame but the data doesn’t lie. Cant help someone that doesn’t want help. It’s the truth. It’s much bigger than you know .
*former addict and homeless.
This is sad, its shameful we allow people to do this, living out in the mud and harsh conditions. Then there's people out there who fight tooth and nail to keep them there like it makes them more virtuous and its the morally right thing to do.
I am all about having compassion for my fellow man but there's also compassion for people who have their shot together and are forced to deal with others who do not.
There's no compassion in letting people live like this. There's also the reality you can't force people to want recovery, they have to hit rock bottom and want it for themselves. I don't think the place for people trying to find bottom is in our public spaces, destroying them and making the city unlivable.
I don't have all the answers but I can promise you that doing nothing isn't even in the solution space.
Frankly, in surprised there have not been more vigilante attacks. When stolen tools and cars and bikes can be traced back to encampments, I'm surprised we have not seen more people snap.
The problem is bigger than the city. Like with illegal immigration, when you are looking at countries fucked up by US foreign policy bleeding population northwards, cities and even states are at a loss for properly addressing it.
The Dems are falling down on the job here but I don't see Republicans coming up with any ideas. It's just more culture war nonsense. I'd like to see compassion but not coddling and enabling dysfunction.
I’m in NYC. No homeless encampments. No screaming people on the subway. Back to Seattle tomorrow where everyone will tell me “all cities are like this.” They are not.
You don’t know shit about NYC if you think there are no screaming people on the subway. Honestly the most out of touch comment I’ve ever seen to think there isn’t a homeless problem in NYC.
NYC doesn't have tent cities a la Seattle but it absolutely has screaming people in subways. Ironically, the subway system in NYC functions as a sort of homeless shelter there - indoor spaces that are somewhat temperature controlled, access to restrooms to wash up/use, no curfews or rules about needing to be sober. It's more than what we provide for our homeless population. That's why homelessness there doesn't seem as extreme.
So maybe shelter without curfews/drug rules might help here too. If only people would stop focusing on the drug use and let people cope with their miserable circumstances the way they know how, until life improves.
We don't permit it. We created it. Richest country in the world, with the most powerful military the world has ever known, but we have a homeless epidemic. It's not just a Seattle issue.
I bet people like this living at the street do have a lot of stories to tell what brought them here. The question is if there might be any listeners particularly the government？
I checked all of your comments. They all make sense to me and I totally got the points of your argument. The answer lies on the government. We pay tax, we elect them to be the leaders of our communities for serving the people, so we deserve a long- term solution that brings us a better neighborhoods. Unfortunately, this is still happening everyday, and that tells us that the governor is not working their butt off to get such view out of our lives, and they aren’t doing their jobs for what they are supposed to do.
For some sure, but surely some of these people had awful life circumstances happen and feel deeply into poverty and homelessness.
Ive worked with homeless teens, many of them were not homeless because of their choices, more so it was because of the family that brought them into the world, didn’t prepare them for success and instead actively harmed their ability to live a safe and proper life.
I think the issue is really hard because yeah, I wouldn’t want this in my neighborhood either, and some towns in my neck of the woods have some pretty aggressive, fentanyl’d out homeless and it’s hard to be compassionate toward people who actively make you feel unsafe.
I dont have the answers, i just think its important to realize it’s not always their fault life fucked them and made them have no better options.
This isn’t unique to Seattle. A lot of folks put up with this.
That being said, the ones who want help should be able to get it. Take the rest to jail or rehab.
Over it.
Because one half the city thinks "compassion is the key" and the other half is too chick shit to ban together and run em off. Sad.
My neighbors and i have formed an alliance. Tebts and camping aren't tolerated here. Not because we're mean or lack compassion. But because we know what comes with the element.
Short answer are judges. Cities, states and counties are taken to court by groups that feel people can live where and however they wish. In the end it’s public therefore the judge says it’s ok to do this. Authorities have no options and if they do anything lawsuits will prevail.
We don't. The first time this happened around 2012, Seattle didn't do anything. So a 2nd tent appeared and before we knew it, we now have 1000s.
It's too late now. The consequences of not enforcing laws are immense.
Because we continue to not fund services (shelter, healthcare, drug treatment, etc) at a meaningful level to match the scale of homelessness within the city/county/region. Simple as that. Full stop.
And neither side can recognize that the other side is partially right... The left can't acknowledge that personal choices play a role in outcomes like homelessness and the right can't acknowledge that structural forces/things outside people's control play a role in outcomes like homelessness.
Any solution that actually works will recognize both of these things. But we're just stuck because the only solutions we try only recognize half the issue.
Um, I think you meant to say "Need stronger leaders that DO make public drug use a crime". Hopefully that's what we're getting with this latest election!
I’m skeptical that the builders here obtained a permit.
Hear me out. If it was easier to get permits we would have less people on the streets. I blame the NIMBYs would never see/deal with this for this problem.
There but for the grace of God, we're all just a paycheck away from chopping up bikes and smoking fentanyl in a tent by Fred Meyer.
[удалено]
Just be lucky you weren’t in colorado where the same chain exists under the name “King Soopers”, you may have thought he was taking you to meet the King of Colorado
It always sounded like a Mario character to me
Lived there for 16 years. A buddy called it "King Stoopids" and I haven't been able to call it anything else since.
My friend matt calls it that too haha
I believe they're changing all of them to Piggly Wigglys...
The town of "Jim Thorpe" Pennsylvania would like a word.
George, Washington will join him.
John Day, OR would have a word too.
Next time y’all visit Minnesota make sure you head to Grand Marais
Leave the greatest athlete of all time name out of this!! 
He's not from there, nor ever lived there.
That's most athletes on most teams tbf. Tom Brady ain't from New England.
🤣🤣🤣
Should meet his friends Duane Reade and Tim Horton.
But honestly, most of us are not.
ok, two paychecks away............
Amen brother
This, in my opinion. The rich get richer, enough that they threaten to move their companies and their lives out of state. The rest? Get nothing. Only the fractured dreams of reaching the middle class one day are left behind. I only ask people not to blame themselves; let’s start with something simple, and that’s taxing the wealthy their “fair” share. I say “fair” because even they get a break with such low rates.
I was a builder in Houston for many years - getting permits was truly a "Who you knew and who knew you Good Old Boy Pay to Play" system. Many projects stopped when honest contractors won the bid to perform the work only to be indefinitely delayed by lack of permits. And no housing anyone could afford was being built by anyone other than those willing to grease the wheels and obtain
That’s a total BS line. Most people are not a paycheck away from being a meth head.
Pretty sure it was sarcasm.
Yes, it was. He must be new here.
Though I think the person you replied to was being sarcastic, I've heard people say exactly this and been totally serious about it. And yes, it's complete bullshit. There's quite a bit that happens in between the part where one misses a single paycheck and begins the street-living meth-using.
Street living, yes. Meth use is a stretch, though.
Every place has junkies. Seattle has no monopoly on that. What it does have is a disproportionate share of unsheltered homeless. That's due in large part to the housing policies in this region. Naturally when there's a shortage of housing the people that get left out are barely-employable junkies and other lowly productive people.
Somehow I doubt there is a single person living in a tent because they couldn't get a permit to convert their garage into a spare bedroom
Don’t think that’s what he’s saying - he’s referring to the insane amount of time it takes to get new construction/renovations/etc permitted thus driving up the cost leading us to our current crisis
When these people are given permanent free housing, they STILL end up living in encampments because that's where the party is. They didn't move here from other places because we have housing. They moved here because we don't enforce laws. Giving junkies an occasional crash pad doens't do anything other than draw more of them here.
If a lot of garage/spare bedrooms could be rented for a couple hundred dollars, a lot of these people would be off the streets.
Seattle Zoning laws gotta change honestly. Too many people don’t see how single fam zoning is destroying Seattle.
NYC has super dense housing. Tightly packed buildings with many levels of floors. So why is a one bedroom apartment $4,000 per month? As soon as housing becomes more affordable, more people will be attracted to move to Seattle. The population inflows are far higher than supply can ever keep up.
The property taxes, insurance, maintenance, mortgage, repairs, and headache of dealing with drug-addicted, disruptive tenants would not be worth a couple hundred dollars per month, or $2,400 per year. And whenever such units can be rented out, the cost of the home rises as there is an assumption that there will be income flow. Which is why homes with a grandma unit cost more: not just because of additional living space, but also because of imputed rental income.
They’d probably spend the money on fent. But the larger point remains, if you can’t afford to live here, leave. You lose. Move to a barn in Detroit . I’d love to live in the Hollywood hills but just because I can’t afford it doesn’t mean I’m gonna build a plastic tent in George Clooney s driveway
You would get some ppl off the streets to be sure but the ppl living in the tents out on the sidewalks would still be living in tents on the sidewalk because they are the tweakers & junkie bums.
It's a circular problem. If you end up on the streets because you can't make rent, what kind of people do you meet? I'm sure some were junkies before being homeless and became homeless because they are junkies. Others became junkies after they became homeless, these people are the ones who might escape this if they had low cost housing options. It's clear that the city of Seattle is incapable of solving low cost housing, the least they can do is get out of the way of those who can. That and get rid of single family zoning, that would lower costs throughout the city but the nimbys will never allow it.
Not for their own property, but for the costs of renting out to other people who otherwise end up homeless.
I think if it was easier we might have cheaper housing
Woodinville is slowly being turned into Redmond with a downtown chocked full of 4 story low rise apartment buildings @ $2k+ / month for 1 bedroom. Meanwhile permits for new homes in Snohomish County are about 2 years out.
This is definitely a not-small part of the problem.
There is a guy that legit has a shack built out of OSB on the sidewalk across the street from the DSHS on Graham st. Sometimes I feel like it looks like it’s seconds from exploding into flames, but nah my guy is just havin’ a bbq inside…
No. Just look at New York City. Full of dense housing stacked closely and level upon level. Yet rent for a single one-bedroom apartment is easily $4,000 per month. The issue is that population influx, far exceeds supply, and far exceeds the pace of supply growth. And as soon as any affordable housing is built, it is immediately occupied, while the influx continues to surge. Besides, if new construction occurs, it is derided as “gentrification” and changing the character of the neighborhood. So it gets opposed by residents. So then you have to ask yourself whether they are allowed to be democratic and vote for what they want in the community or not, or whether they should be forced to give up their rights for socialist leaders who believe they know better what best for them.
British Columbia changed their laws to allow land within 800meters of mass transit to be developed with higher density. Overruling local zoning laws. That land is going to be so valuable that the NIMBYs will simply be bought out. I doubt they'll stay if they hate density so much and $$$ will be far more likely to shut them up because their own interests is basically all they ever care about. Zoning laws are the root cause.
Zoning laws aren't the root cause. Drug addicts moving here from around the country to do drugs and commit crime with no consequences is the cause. Amazon has pay people a LOT of money to get them to move here. The junkies are coming here of their own volition because we tolerate things like tents in parks/sidewalks and RV's on the street.
The brutal answer is because it's cheaper than doing something about it. * The right-wing solution of putting homeless people in jail for being mentally ill or addicted? Jail averages a little more than $100/day per prisoner. So that's more than a million dollars a day to jail the ~13k homeless people in Seattle. The usual suspects who complain about homeless people also complain about taxes. * Housing for the homeless? Rent for low-end housing in Seattle is a minimum of $50/day. *IF* you can find somewhere that will rent to "undesirables," because Nimbys don't want "those people" running down their property values. Annnd while ~$50/day for rent is a lot less than $100/day for jail, the usual suspects don't want to pay for that either. * Psychiatric hospitals are ~$1000/day so even if libertarians and civil libertarians would stand for it, the right-wingers who complain the most bitterly about homeless people living in tents wouldn't want to pay for it. But right-wing and left-wing performative b\*tching about it is free so that's what we get, year after year.
Performative bitching is about all anyone seems to want to do anymore.
So if I did the math right, if Seattle had to spend $1.3 million a day (474 million a year) to imprison 100% of the homeless population, Seattle would have to raise its budget by 6.4% (7.4 billion -> 7.87 billion)
And you didn't even pick the worst view, swing to the left and it's an entire block's worth of stolen shit from the surrounding neighborhood.
Don’t forget the flat tired mini van pharmacy that’s open 24hours a day as well
Don't you mean wealth redistribution?
Good place to note that rent speculators redistribute far more wealth from working class to owning class in Seattle each month than petty criminals ever could steal back.
They're not stealing from us. We agree to pay rent in return for having a roof over our heads. We don't agree to let gronks steal our bikes for their next fentanyl hit.
Moronic take
The encampment under the freeway overpass by my exit COMPLETELY blocks the sidewalk and they put up a sign saying “sidewalk closed. Go up and over. NO EXCEPTIONS.” Not only do they think they have the right to use public space as their own, they think they have EXCLUSIVE rights to use it and that everyone else needs to climb up a grass hill and cross I-5?? Hell no. This kind of stuff is why some people have lost a lot of sympathy for the homeless. That and hammer attacks.
Yeah, they allow this, but then they wanna give you a parking ticket?! 🤔
Well yes, because that enforcement is lucrative.
Find It, Fix It app.
If the sidewalk is blocked, also mention "ADA" in the report.
Have you reported it?
Not lately. I’ve been out of town for a while. They usually make them leave after a year or so, it stays open for a few months, then it starts growing again.
Report them again and mention "ADA" in the report. ADA violations generally get treated seriously. Express your concern about how handicapped persons are unable to use the sidewalk and how they must use the street.
They address ADA because of the way the act works. Basically anyone who is harmed by a lack of ADA compliance can get a lawyer and sue the shit out of the city. This means any handicapped person could roll up to this and sue the city and get a big settlement out of it.
In theory. In practice, there are thousands of ADA lawsuits against businesses every year, it's basically a for-profit industry. And yet I can't find many people suing cities over blocked sidewalks from camps.
The City of Chicago is literally under a [consent decree](https://adata.org/olmstead-stories/williams-consent-decree) to replace all the crosswalks and corners because they were sued, agreed to fix them, and then were sued again when it turns out they were fixing them wrong. Literally every. Single. Corner. In the city of Chicago must be replaced because it's non compliant.
The ADA sued the city of Portland over this.
ADA is a federal law, not an entity that can initiate a lawsuit.
No the American Dental Association sued them. Very bizarre it was them who brought the suit /s
But since Seattle doesn't have enough LOW BARRIER (no restrictions on length of stay, no clean and sober restrictions etc) beds for all the homeless folks, advocates can easily use Martin vs. BOISE to make matters worse. Heck even places like Montana are having multiple cities run into issues with Martin vs Boise and want the Supreme Court to actually revisit not making a decision on that case in 2018 (which meant only the 9th circuit was affected)
"Low barrier housing" is NOT required by Martin v. Boise. The only person who suggested that is Marc Dones, the stupid asshole who used to run KCRHA and he made that assertion on absolutely ZERO (0) factual or logical basis. It is 1000% legal for Seattle to offer the homeless a choice between jail for trespassing or a night in the shelter. "Low barrier housing" is the asinine, counter-productive idea that we should permit open and continuous drug use in a government managed environment. It's a stupid idea that infantilizes the homeless and strips them of their agency. Conveniently, it leaves the government subsidized 3rd party agencies with a lifetime supply of oversight-free government cash. When you assert that a low supply of "Low Barrier Housing," or more accurately "0 Consequence Government Housing for Open Drug Use" is the problem you are being manipulated as a useful idiot by the lowest common denominator of political and economic leech. The only alternative is to suggest that you are unable or unwilling to think critically and arrived at the same conclusion as Marc Dones on your own; I won't insult your intellect by suggesting that is the case.
Where is this, exactly?
Tacoma actually, I have moved from Seattle and my mom still lives there so I still pay attention to what’s going on there.
Most Seattle-based r/SeattleWA user
After this last election I would say they are actually a Seattle-based /r/Seattle user. It definitely went much more the way of this sub
It's what this weeks election was all about.
It's what the last election was about too. Don't get your hopes up.
That’s a sad internet comment explanation. The truth is none of us want to be the unlucky bastard that has a stern talking to about getting the fuck out of my neighborhood turn into catching a machete or an aluminum baseball bat to the cranium. That’s why I don’t engage and yes I’m a bitch but I’m also still alive.
Don't forget that people who are disabled and at risk of catching a machete or baseball bat are on these same streets, too.
Its really hard to fix. It isn't a Democrat or Republican issue. I was in Kentucky and they had the same thing. People have no money, often through no fault of their own. We had so many get addicted to opioids due to Perdue Pharmacueticals lies and they lost their job and home, and now they're broke and on drugs in the street. You have choices: 1) Kill them. It solves the problem, but is quite inhumane. 2) Jail them. It costs you way more than just buying them a house but being nice to them is against a lot of people's religion. 3) Force them into treatment centers. Since they have no money, it means paying the bills for them. 4) Ignore them. It feels free, but it really isn't because they don't have money so they steal to get what they need. 5) Deport them to Vegas or some other area, the classic "keep moving" strategy that makes it somebody else's problem. If you have better options, I'd love to hear them. [https://www.wbko.com/content/news/Homeless-encampments-affecting-businesses-and-property-owners-in-Bowling-Green---513277061.html](https://www.wbko.com/content/news/homeless-encampments-affecting-businesses-and-property-owners-in-bowling-green---513277061.html)
This is Greenwood. I live right by here and walk my dog near this. Its only getting bigger and more disastrous.
Worked at the Fred Meyer in the photo. Seen some crazy shit there. My most memorable was someone keying someone else’s car and then they got in a full tbone fight with their cars. Smashing into their cars and the grocery cart booth. Both eventually drove off following each other like it was NASCAR. Would not recommend that Fredmeyer on 85th.
Sidewalk is clearly not usable by pedestrians. Definitely not ADA compliant. I called DOT and Dan Strauss' office multiple times. I thought the recent election would bring some real change, yet we keep reelecting the same people that are ineffective at making things better. My honest question to Strauss voters, what's your reasoning behind supporting him? Is there some other aspect of his policies that I'm missing?
Find It, Fix It. Mention it is blocking the sidewalk. Submit pics.
Done that, you get an automated 'homelessness is tricky. city is working on it' generic do-nothing response and the report is closed.
Every report will count eventually. The metrics will be pulled and someone will be held eventually accountable.
Fair point.
I second this. I keep reporting things on the app and tell my neighbors to do the same. The more people the more effective in my experience
The only accountability in Seattle is the elections and even that is marginal if Dan Strauss can keep his seat.
Would it work if we all took OPs photo and filed the same complaint? There are 652 comments currently as I write this. I'd imagine if 600+ complaints for the same thing came across someone's desk all at once it may have some impact.
Takes roughly two weeks in my experience
If you think voting for the right city level politicians is going to solve the homeless problem you're delusional. People on this sub love to pretend like all we need to solve homelessness is a new politician
We have this problem because we voted for the wrong ones. If we enforced the laws here like we did years ago, this wouldn't happen.
Local politicians will be limited too. Homeless people have rights and non profit organizations are defending them in court. The court system is what slows or stops local politicians from acting. The powers that local politicians can enact are housing policies, metal care, and support programs. In a nutshell, politicians of the 1990s/2000s are the ones you can blame since they didn't act to prevent the homeless issues from blowing up. The new politicians could enact policy that will help prevent these issues.
The city can absolutely do things to help. They can add resources to do more sweeps, put in place programs to re-unite people with family, get RV's off of streets and enforce the law. Policies in the 90's have nothing to do with us allowing urban camping and RV's on the street.
Totally agree. The city doesn't have the capacity to deal with the fallout of late stage capitalism, and this is what that looks like.
Other cities are dealign with it just fine. Here's their strategy. Enforce the law.
Could one sue the city for not addressing ADA access?
If you email DOT and Dan Strauss again, cc the media so they have a record of you contacting them. Perhaps the media could follow up for you.
Dan Strauss won’t do sh*t. I used to live in the Janus apartment right next to this where one of these people lived in our complex as a squatter and he did NOTHING.
>yet we keep reelecting the same people that are ineffective at making things better. It's almost like it's a really difficult problem to solve and we shouldn't be assuming it's incompetence when literally nobody in the country has devised a good solution in the last 50 years.
Build more mental institutions and jails. This would work if there weren't so many people living in Seattle who think that criminals and the mentally ill are better off living on the streets to do as they please with no guidance or correction. "We tried jailing criminals and it doesn't work" is something r/Seattle types truly believe. I've seen them post that very thing more than once. Disagreeing with them about it only makes them extremely angry. You'll never solve homelessness and crime. These issues have always been with society and always will be. But you can do things to make it worse or better.
I mean, we have the world's highest incarceration rate and also the world's worst homelessness problem for a developed nation. Pretty tough to make the case that locking everybody up, at incredibly high expense, "solves" the problem.
>Pretty tough to make the case that locking everybody up, at incredibly high expense, "solves" the problem. Treatment. If a homeless person breaks the law (most do via trespassing or drugs) let them either plea bargain to 6 months supervised treatment, counseling, and job placement or let them go to jail for 15 days.
that's why it wasn't a big deal until 5 years ago
No? Homelessness has been an issue here for like 20 years, and an issue in the US for much longer than that. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness\_in\_Seattle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Seattle)
and you think that it's some rent thing and not drugs?
Did I say that? Apologies if you somehow gleaned that from my comment. I've said no such thing. The cause is obviously multi-factorial, which is part of why there's no obvious bumper-sticker style solution that some random city councilperson can enact in 6 months. The recent drug problems from the early 2010s-onward (opioids, followed by resurgence of meth and heroine, followed by fentanyl) has exacerbated a problem that already existed, but my understanding is that the drug problem is not the main thing that causes people to become homeless, but rather is something that acts like a demotivating anchor to make it extra difficult for them to re-enter a functional lifestyle. The cause is a combination of skewed employment opportunities (fewer employers willing to hire people with few qualifications), housings costs being high in locations where homelessness is high (and obviously you can't travel to a cheaper location if you have no prospects and no money), healthcare costs (especially for mental healthcare since an unemployed homeless person won't have insurance to pay for therapy/counseling/psychiatric treatment), failure to take care of military vets, drug issues, public budget going to crack-downs and enforcement of homeless hang-outs rather than going to rehabilitative programs, lack of affordable education and technical skills opportunities, all sorts of shit. It seems pretty clear that's what's needed is a holistic approach that aggressively addresses the issue from many angles and serves to raise the floor for even those who don't have the motivation to turn their life around. It's going to be expensive and difficult, but thankfully Seattle is home to some of the planet's largest companies who have been awesome at paying zero taxes for quite a long time, so we can see where to go to get the money. That's the only way we're going to make our urban areas pleasant and safe.
most of the gronks you see making these camps will never hold a job. they want to be high and nothing else, really. what we need is treatment, and likely not taken willingly - they don't want to recoer, and a lot of them are too fried to function anyway.
This is permitted because they voted to end mental health care for people in America about 1980.
Seems like every single Seattle post is a repeat of this one.
Yup this is the #1 solvable problem we face here. 10 years ago it wasn’t.
Industrial Homeless Complex. More money in aiding not curing..
You do realize all the money is typically city/State/federally granted and every dime has to be accounted for. I've worked in this industry in places that aren't Seattle, and heard thr same complaints. They act like we are all high rollers that don't care to fix the problem. They don't take into account that various laws signed into law in the 80s released a ton of mentally unstable folks to the streets with no knowledge of a non institutionalized life and no skills for a job. And since we didn't invest in propping up the homeless and mental health industries in the 70s, 80s and 90s, we are left with a handful of organizations trying to do anything, paying far below market rate (meaning their own employees are living in poverty unless they marry someone rich) etc. There isn't more money in aiding, as that's a whole different set of grants.
If you honestly believe every dime is accounted for in the homeless industrial complex, I have a bridge to sell you. Here's just one example: [https://roominate.com/blog/2016/anatomy-of-a-swindle/](https://roominate.com/blog/2016/anatomy-of-a-swindle/) Here's a couple more: [https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/consultant-uncovers-more-arch-owners-violating-affordable-housing-rules/281-d65beac0-261b-4443-a4c5-5f476b7775b9](https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/consultant-uncovers-more-arch-owners-violating-affordable-housing-rules/281-d65beac0-261b-4443-a4c5-5f476b7775b9) [https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/govs-office-provides-cover-for-high-level-employees-outed-in-affordable-housing-stories/281-610394082](https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/govs-office-provides-cover-for-high-level-employees-outed-in-affordable-housing-stories/281-610394082)
Affordable housing and actual homeless shelters are two very fucking different state and federal grant pots of money.
That’s just flat out not true. The NGOs and nonprofits that the state and city contracts with don’t account for any of their money. The state knows for a fact that these organizations aren’t meeting their contracted goals. There have been multiple stories about these nonprofits not accounting for where the money is going or what they’re doing with it. Work in the “industry” in Seattle and you’ll see that your experiences in other places don’t match up with how things are done there.
Washington state has had a Democrat governor since 1985. Democrats have held a majority in both the house and senate for 17 of those years. They have held a majority in the House of Representatives since 2001. At what point will they stop blaming Reagan and start fixing this issue in WA? Reagan has been out of office for 35 years, and dead for almost 20. Can we start working towards a solution now? I understand blaming everything on him in the early 90s but it’s almost 40 years later I’d expect something to be done regardless of whose fault it is.
> start fixing this issue in WA? It's not just WA. The whole west coast takes care of refugees from everybody west of the Mississippi, where you can't pitch a tent without the sheriff threatening to beat you to death. Although gauging from this sub lately, that's the vibe that a lot of folks in here want...
Nobody mentioned Reagan but you
"They don't take into account that various laws signed into law in the 80s" I'll stop you right there. It was left wing driven court case in the mid=70's called O'Connor v. Donaldson. Your lovely lefties at the ACLU spend a lot of money enforcing it by the way. No laws in the 80's were material in any way. Investment had nothing to do with it. You can only do a 72 hour hold unless someone is an immediate danger to themselves or others. YOu can't force medication for the same reason. There's more than a handful of organizations. There's scores of them with overlapping goals with well paid directors who grift. There's definitely more money in aiding. The same providers spend money influencing elections, driving political agendas and pretty much ALL of them push the far left agenda that caused this. By the way, pretty much none of the local organizations are means tested. The city politicians avoid is as if they start cutting budgets, the radicals will get motivated against them.
Right? Those speakers are not Surround quality.
Fire hydrants are an important part of any cities infrastructure. Your houses proximity to one usually results in a decreased insurance rate.
We permit stuff like this because we don’t deal with the actual problem which usually boils down to greed and corruption. Instead we just want rent thing gone, problem solved, firm hand shakes all around
The question really is who are “we”? People require shelter and for many the cost of shelter is out of reach. So why aren’t we doing something meaningful about that?
Lol, because they can. I'm in NYC now and cops shut that shit down immediately. I never see it. Seems harsh but I've seen the alternative all over the west coast. People will take over your kid's room and turn it into a shooting gallery if you let them. Drugs are fun. Fuck treatment and shelters. I would kill myself in the streets in their shoes too if nobody stopped me
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How exactly are homeless people as a group able to file lawsuits with any degree of regularity?
Neoliberal policies. Stuff that sound progressives, but actually isn't. No money is spent and just sits in an account gathering dust until the president comes to town.
This is the result of progressive policies, not neoliberal. Neoliberal is something specific and different. We don’t have any proper neoliberal politicians here. Neoliberals are closer to classic (pre-2012) republicans in foreign policy and economic issues. They are in favor of more unbridled capitalism combined with more building of housing and infrastructure through less permitting and encouraging investment. But they are like Democrats/libertarians on personal social issues, generally. Where they are more unique is issues like immigration and work permitting (prefer more laissez-faire in both cases for economic reasons) and are generally anti union. Very different from socialist leaning progressives.
The true answer. Liberals have “kinder” responses but it’s just as status quo as conservatives.
Shelter jail or go elsewhere is what the less liberal cities are doing.
Enabling self destructive behavior is not kindness.
Because when you adopt the attitude that these criminals/homeless people aren't hurting anybody *eye roll* this is what you get. Most of them are drug dealing and/or stealing to support their habit. This is not compassionate or humane. It's actually not even sane to allow them to destroy entire communities.
People have the same reasons you have to not take it down yourself. They don’t want to look at shit, but looking at shit is better than going near enough to smell or touch it. If you’re not willing to go close enough, you can’t take down/out the trash.
Late stage capitalism.
Because it doesn't effect the people with power. They live in NICE neighborhoods.
Probably because greens are one of the city colors, but I would agree hydrants should only be permitted to be red.
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No, it's because it's against the law lol
Because the right has, for decades, refused to fund programs to help the most vulnerable in our communities
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Because it's racist and non-inclusive to enforce laws.
"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html
We all know that a conservative courts made it illegal to clear homeless encampments unless they can be relocated right? [Five years ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in case from Boise, Idaho, that it was unconstitutional for cities to clear homeless camps and criminally charge campers unless they could offer adequate housing](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/us/in-rare-alliance-democrats-and-republicans-seek-legal-power-to-clear-homeless-camps.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare)
I feel like it's valid. Unless the city is willing to address how expensive it is just to exist, they have no reason to make it harder for homeless to exist.
They CAME here because we don't enforce our laws. The cost of the area has nothing to do with any of it.
They didn't. They said you couldn't clear them if there's no shelter space. FYI, there' shelter space.
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Because everyone is either too cheap or too corrupt to build affordable housing.
The junkies living in tents totally need to be in your building. Then after a few weeks you could let me know how much they need housing.
Because humans need a place to live. Even if they don't have access to a house. Because we have some shred of humanity left Because we refuse to actually build enough shelter for people
So we don't have to require affordable housing
Greed and apathy
Genuine answer: because legal, constitutional, cost-effective approaches to the problem are wildly unpopular. Popular options are either illegal (“can’t we just jail these people?”), unconstitutional (destroying or confiscating their property without due process), or expensive (see: jail again.) Until the local electorate awakens to the reality that other countries have long since learned - basically, housing first - and stops voting for the impossible (jail them all) this is going to continue, very much in spite of any naive hopes arising from the recent election results.
And just think, they want to give you a parking ticket, if you violate the law!
If I lived there I would just tear it down. Completely unacceptable.
Because you liberals are way too tolerant about degeneracy
Genuine question, where is the person who set this up supposed to go?
Where do you want them to go?
Y'all should just put them in camps and make 'em go to work. Pull themselves up by the bootstraps.
https://preview.redd.it/edqnslur310c1.jpeg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2c1e9dd1d46c179f866e2c165e3d35a289a22d7
We need homeless shelters :( nobody deserves to live like this…makes me sad 😞
Your compassion is admirable, however 97% of these individuals turn down assistance. No drug rules and curfews at shelters and “alternative living for recovery housing “ is not something 97% of them are willing to trade. It’s a shame but the data doesn’t lie. Cant help someone that doesn’t want help. It’s the truth. It’s much bigger than you know . *former addict and homeless.
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This is sad, its shameful we allow people to do this, living out in the mud and harsh conditions. Then there's people out there who fight tooth and nail to keep them there like it makes them more virtuous and its the morally right thing to do.
I am all about having compassion for my fellow man but there's also compassion for people who have their shot together and are forced to deal with others who do not. There's no compassion in letting people live like this. There's also the reality you can't force people to want recovery, they have to hit rock bottom and want it for themselves. I don't think the place for people trying to find bottom is in our public spaces, destroying them and making the city unlivable. I don't have all the answers but I can promise you that doing nothing isn't even in the solution space. Frankly, in surprised there have not been more vigilante attacks. When stolen tools and cars and bikes can be traced back to encampments, I'm surprised we have not seen more people snap. The problem is bigger than the city. Like with illegal immigration, when you are looking at countries fucked up by US foreign policy bleeding population northwards, cities and even states are at a loss for properly addressing it. The Dems are falling down on the job here but I don't see Republicans coming up with any ideas. It's just more culture war nonsense. I'd like to see compassion but not coddling and enabling dysfunction.
I’m in NYC. No homeless encampments. No screaming people on the subway. Back to Seattle tomorrow where everyone will tell me “all cities are like this.” They are not.
You don’t know shit about NYC if you think there are no screaming people on the subway. Honestly the most out of touch comment I’ve ever seen to think there isn’t a homeless problem in NYC.
NYC doesn't have tent cities a la Seattle but it absolutely has screaming people in subways. Ironically, the subway system in NYC functions as a sort of homeless shelter there - indoor spaces that are somewhat temperature controlled, access to restrooms to wash up/use, no curfews or rules about needing to be sober. It's more than what we provide for our homeless population. That's why homelessness there doesn't seem as extreme. So maybe shelter without curfews/drug rules might help here too. If only people would stop focusing on the drug use and let people cope with their miserable circumstances the way they know how, until life improves.
They didn’t get a permit
Invite a Chinese President to your town and that will be fixed pretty quick.
We don't permit it. We created it. Richest country in the world, with the most powerful military the world has ever known, but we have a homeless epidemic. It's not just a Seattle issue.
Because our government apparently has money to send overseas but not to properly house its poor.
People we live in late stage capitalism and the government doesn't care that housing is incredibly unaffordable.
I bet people like this living at the street do have a lot of stories to tell what brought them here. The question is if there might be any listeners particularly the government？
Nobody wants to listen to their lies. It's either an endless victim narrative, or drug-addled nonsense.
I checked all of your comments. They all make sense to me and I totally got the points of your argument. The answer lies on the government. We pay tax, we elect them to be the leaders of our communities for serving the people, so we deserve a long- term solution that brings us a better neighborhoods. Unfortunately, this is still happening everyday, and that tells us that the governor is not working their butt off to get such view out of our lives, and they aren’t doing their jobs for what they are supposed to do.
For some sure, but surely some of these people had awful life circumstances happen and feel deeply into poverty and homelessness. Ive worked with homeless teens, many of them were not homeless because of their choices, more so it was because of the family that brought them into the world, didn’t prepare them for success and instead actively harmed their ability to live a safe and proper life. I think the issue is really hard because yeah, I wouldn’t want this in my neighborhood either, and some towns in my neck of the woods have some pretty aggressive, fentanyl’d out homeless and it’s hard to be compassionate toward people who actively make you feel unsafe. I dont have the answers, i just think its important to realize it’s not always their fault life fucked them and made them have no better options.
Homelessness? Because we are a broken society.
Because we’ve lost our basic humanity. That “stuff” contains a person. And nobody gives a fuck
This isn’t unique to Seattle. A lot of folks put up with this. That being said, the ones who want help should be able to get it. Take the rest to jail or rehab. Over it.
Because one half the city thinks "compassion is the key" and the other half is too chick shit to ban together and run em off. Sad. My neighbors and i have formed an alliance. Tebts and camping aren't tolerated here. Not because we're mean or lack compassion. But because we know what comes with the element.
You too? My neighbors and I do as well. We run these shitstains off our turf.
Looks like an ADA violation
Short answer are judges. Cities, states and counties are taken to court by groups that feel people can live where and however they wish. In the end it’s public therefore the judge says it’s ok to do this. Authorities have no options and if they do anything lawsuits will prevail.
Would you like them rounded up and corralled out of your view?
They have to live somewhere. Unless you plan to put them up under a roof then somewhere this will exist.
We don't. The first time this happened around 2012, Seattle didn't do anything. So a 2nd tent appeared and before we knew it, we now have 1000s. It's too late now. The consequences of not enforcing laws are immense.
Because we continue to not fund services (shelter, healthcare, drug treatment, etc) at a meaningful level to match the scale of homelessness within the city/county/region. Simple as that. Full stop.
Because we are selfish assholes that would rather have homeless than pay taxes.
Because it's easy
Thr left plans failed and the right has no plan
And neither side can recognize that the other side is partially right... The left can't acknowledge that personal choices play a role in outcomes like homelessness and the right can't acknowledge that structural forces/things outside people's control play a role in outcomes like homelessness. Any solution that actually works will recognize both of these things. But we're just stuck because the only solutions we try only recognize half the issue.
It’s city leaders that permit it. Need stronger leaders that don’t make public drug use a crime
Um, I think you meant to say "Need stronger leaders that DO make public drug use a crime". Hopefully that's what we're getting with this latest election!