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What Does This Story Reveal about Seattle?
The story over at MyNorthwest.com is titled Crews clear North Seattle homeless encampment after six years of complaints from residents. Here are some quotes.
After complaints about trash, rats, crime and rampant drug activity for six years, city of Seattle crews and Seattle police cleared an encampment at North 125th Street and Stone Avenue North on Tuesday.
I lived in an apartment right at that location from 1991 to 1992. At that time, it was just north of the Seattle city limits and had no sidewalks. I parked my car in a gravel lot across the street from my apartment.
There were also tons of trash and debris in a spot where city signs warned about illegal dumping.
KIRO 7 learned that the city reached out to people who were living in their cars, RVs and tents, to offer shelter.
One source close to the situation told KIRO 7 that the majority of people did not accept the offers for help and just moved to another location.
Seattle’s compassionate policy toward the homeless is that they “offer shelter and services” to the street people in the encampments, but if the vagrants refuse help, they are allowed to stay. If the camps are cleared out, you can expect to hear cries of “No! Don’t remove those poor, homeless people from their only homes! You are heartless and evil if you clear out the homeless who have nowhere else to go.”
Very little care is evidenced for the poor, taxpaying homeowners whose property values are reduced, and whose daily lives are made very uncomfortable by all the filth, trash, used needles, drug dealing, and crime caused by the poor homeless.
However, few of those complaining homeowners decide they can’t take it anymore and leave. They do a lot of complaining but stay where they are. And they elect the mayor and city council members who allow the situation to continue.
Published in Domestic Policy
I don’t know anything about Seattle, so I’ll ask…
Has nobody run for mayor on a “we’ll clean up this filth” platform?
Is this another example of The Curley Effect?
I wonder – do they feel as if they are trapped?
Nobody runs for mayor vowing to clean up the filth. They vow to help all the homeless find housing, since they believe, wrongly, that the homeless problem can be solved by spending taxpayer money on “affordable housing”. They spend multi-millions of taxpayer dollars on the homeless, and the homeless continue to multiply. As is usual for the Left, if spending money doesn’t work, they just spend more money. And if the homeless won’t accept shelter, they are left alone.
Interesting
Is this consistent with Tucker’s recent opinion, starting around the 03:00 mark, but more directly to your point starting around 05:00:
https://rumble.com/v1h3x89-tucker-carlson-tonight-82322-fox-breaking-news-trump-august-23-2022.html
I would say that this phenomenon is one of the biggest differences I’ve seen between forty years ago and now. It used to be that when things got bad enough with crime and filth, people would move or vote for candidates who promised to restore law and order. But progressives seem hellbent on destroying themselves along with everyone else. It seems to be more important them to wave their woke bona fides than to preserve their property or their lives. So you can’t help these people as they won’t help themselves. It’s why there will be no conservatives left in the big cities or deep blue states. They have no choice but to move when relief at the ballot box is not forthcoming.
That some of the homeless places are near City Council members’ homes, and they won’t have it?
I used to live slightly northwest of there. They had a crazy scandal. They had dozens at a school, and then the school paid some nonprofit to manage it or get rid of them. It was one guy and no other case workers. He got a contract and then the fun starts. lol
https://mynorthwest.com/3289024/rantz-no-plans-to-investigate-massive-seattle-homeless-scandal-ensuring-it-happens-again/
As long as they refuse to investigate, they can claim it’s all clean. Same with elections.
Going to a homeless shelter means that there are rules. Being on the streets means that there are no rules. People who are drug addicts, and the mentally ill who self-medicate do not make good decisions, but they are lucid enough to know that they cannot do as they please in a shelter, or in a Section 8 apartment complex.
You nailed it 100% RushBaby49! I’ve lived in this area 13 years now. The street people mostly don’t want to leave the street, even when offered other options. It’s what Seattlites and every other progressive city get wrong about most of these people. They turn down help and move to a new spot. Good luck trying to pusuade them of that though. I’m batting 0/13 years
DEAD ON. that’s why advocates here call for housing without rules, like our “drunk dorms.” these are places people go and can get loaded, and someone is on-site to try and revive them. I hear homeless advocates here say “but what if they have a dog? or a lover? they can’t stay together in most shelters. therefore we can’t have rules.
they assume everyone acts in their best interest and can’t wrap their minds around someone choosing a life on the street. As Doug pointed out, for many a life without rules is attractive.
I wouldn’t expect much from an investigation by the very people who created the problem. See Congress and the executive branch
When is the next election?
What does this reveal about Seattle?
It is impressive that they removed the encampment. But these offers of help mean the city does not have a clue and that it will continue to circle the drain.
This is a priceless quote from an article on the KOMO Web site, just so you know how the “Homeless-Industrial Complex” thinks about the encampments. Emphasis mine.
No wonder the city lets them stay! Oh, yeah, it’s “not hurting anybody”. Tell that to the neighbors! Watch the video in the article linked.
A vegetable garden, eh? Is pot a “vegetable” now?
The policy is what Scott McKay calls Weaponized Government Failure. Drive out the middle class which cares about things like this and will vote to stop it, and you have no problems with those pesky voters.
I would not mind some of these encampments if (a) they were temporary expedients in an actual plan for a practical relocation (b) the conditions, density, and behaviors were regulated and (c) there was sufficient policing to control impacts on the immediate neighborhoods. Under those circumstances, local residents might even be more likely to pitch in.
The brain-dead, no Plan B inertial thinking that permits these festering mistakes is the real problem. Vapid “compassion” and temporizing in lieu of governing is a national disease.
I’m not allowed to pitch a tent in a national park outside of designated campgrounds. If I toss trash on a city street, I can be fined. Cities claim they are impotent but they are not. They claim that the homeless – and only the homeless- have to follow no rules whatsoever. Sorry, don’t buy it.
It’s not so much the cities telling you that, it’s more the judges telling the cities that.
Well then challenge on equal protection. If a taxpayer can’t do it because they will lose their property, then neither can a homeless person.
Chula Vista is shutting down a park to get rid of encampments. Taxpayers who fund this park cannot enjoy it. https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/chula-vista-shutting-down-harborside-park-for-90-days-to-clear-out-encampments/3030510/
I checked with the judges, they say that they’re right and you’re wrong.
Always.
As usual then, we will do nothing at all. And just cluck our tongues, move out of our cities until the problem reaches us, and send billions of dollars to people who will grow rich off of telling us we need to give them more money.
Rules are meaningless unless they can be used to hurt normals.
I currently work just across 15th street from a lovely public square since turned into a 24-tent hobo village (who supplied all those tents?!). It is governed by DC and the National Park Service. The NPS even posted one small sign saying no camping (about a year after the camping started).
Banning this now would be a mess. This is why I opined that it would be tolerable only if there were some coherent plan for bringing it to an end rather than sustained open-ended chaos and the development of some weird common-law deference to the new property rights claimed by the squatters.
Read the polite, obsequious notice posted around the square about cleanup. The agencies involved have the absolute legal authority to remove every tent without notice. Pathetic.
Are you sure the judges haven’t told them that they can’t?
Doubt it. It is not in the interests of the forces of chaos to risk clarity. No judges will be involved unless and until there is an actual attempt to clear them out. Franklin Square, Farragut Square, and Lafayette Square nearby have no squatters so some tacit policy decision must be in effect. I dunno.
Once they have total power, they’ll fix matters and probably shut down immigration, not to mention almost everything else some of it even on purpose. Could we get some liberals on here to explain where they think matters are going and why? I’m confused.
Yeas ago I read an op-ed from a professor at the University of Washington, in which he explained why he was leaving Seattle. Rampant crime, hyper regulation on homes, drug use and homelessness everywhere. He couldn’t afford to live there any more, and he didn’t want to. I decided to see if I could contact him somehow, which I did, on Facebook. I respectfully asked him a simple question: “Do you associate progressive policies and politicians with the increase of the things you see that are driving you out of Seattle, and if so, do you intend to vote for progressive policies and politicians where you are moving to?” His answer was interesting and honest. He said that while he generally supported Democratic policies, he could see how those policies, left unchecked, create the environment we find in Seattle. He went on to tell me that in Seattle they don’t have anyone even close to a conservative. Their choices are crazy, and really crazy. So he felt hopeless to change anything.
So, yes, he’s going to keep voting for “progressives”.