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Your comment does one thing that has always bothered me during these kinds of discussions: you seem to assume that there is nothing at all between "bucolic suburb with frolicking children and wide, empty roads" and "dystopian hellscape of methheads in RVs terrorizing everyone in a Mad Max wonderland." I'll also get this out of the way: yes, lots of us in Seattle are well and truly tired of the unsanctioned camps at places like Northgate and the RVs parked everywhere. What we're NOT willing to do, at least not yet, is to slam those people with more arrests and more trips through the criminal enforcement system prior to having services in place that will cover a high percentage of needs. (No, our existing shelter system, whether within Seattle or without in the suburbs, does not meet this requirement.) That's mostly humanity but also because the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit says that it is unconstitutional to run someone off from a place to sleep if there are no alternatives and "you must be stone-cold sober in order to enter this shelter" doesn't work for people who are addicted. (That's one reason why the region needs places like needle exchanges and substance abuse centers. Why shouldn't we concentrate them all in Pioneer Square? Well, for one, because the "junkie homeless" are already in places like Bellevue, sleeping out of their cars and scrounging for food, but they camouflage it better.) Now, as to my original rebuttal. There's a huge need for missing-middle housing in this region. You know, for the people that serve your coffee, deliver your groceries, educate your kids, clean your parks, and paint the lines on those untrammeled roads. The people making well under six figures who shouldn't have to drive for two hours or live beyond the reach of public transit just to get to a job where someone making five times their salary can look down on them for not living in a "good place." That's the kind of housing Microsoft proposes to kick into gear here. We need all kinds of these services because it's humane and it's fiscally and economically prudent to not sprawl all the way from Bremerton to the Tri-Cities. |
Frankly, you just sound uninformed here.
Look at the Northgate encampment — 100% were offered services, 90% rejected them to remain dangerous vagrants spreading disease.
Until you accept that a component here is willful vagrancy and criminality, the problem will get worse.
No amount of money can fix your denial of the problem, and your position isn’t one of compassion — it’s an abdication of any responsibility: in blindly throwing money while abandoning the rule of law, you’re not helping the vagrants, you’re not helping the non-vagrant homeless the vagrants prey on, and you’re not helping the regular citizens that are getting assaulted or stuck with needles (such as that lady at a Northgate).
You’re the problem.
I want you to answer me honestly: when I was homeless, did I deserve to be assaulted by other homeless people while the police refused to do anything because you personally feel bad a vagrant might get arrested?
That’s the system you’re advocating for.
And it’s the definition of immoral baizuo policy.