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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
Mark Steyn used to say – and maybe still does – that in England, a “balanced” discussion panel would consist of someone from the Left, someone from the Far Left, and someone from the Lunatic Left.
Why change what works, right?
Why do you lie to us about Seattle? /s
Sadly this is what you’re up against. People who don’t see a problem.
Adam Carolla talks about this all of the time. The police and any officious government office only harasses people with checking accounts. If you don’t have a checking account, they totally get out of your way so you can do whatever illegality you want.
I forget the details, but they came up with this extremely inequitable way to force homeowners to switch from oil heat to whatever they were going to force them on to. It was really bad. Everybody in that situation got a substantial hole shot through their net worth.