Seattle, a far-left city ruled by far-leftists and socialists, has had a “homeless”problem for decades. Tents and trash line streets downtown, in neighborhoods, and along Seattle’s long waterfronts. Seattle is the home of the Homeless-Industrial Complex of “non-profit” organizations like the Low-Income Housing Institute (LIHI) and SHARE-WHEEL. There is Plymouth Housing, which owns and runs homeless “shelters” all over the Puget Sound area, and the Downtown Emergency Services Center, which runs homeless shelters in the city core of Seattle and elsewhere. All these organizations devour millions of taxpayer dollars, and the only visible effects of those dollars are more and more tents all over the city, people doing drugs and selling drugs on the sidewalks, noise, trash, and overdoses. Wherever there are tents, there is crime, including sales of guns and stolen property.
Most Seattle media are known for being supportive of leftist policies. KIRO’s Charlie Harger is getting a reputation as a straight-thinker, accurately reporting on the deterioration of Seattle due to leftist policies.
Residents all over Seattle complain constantly about the tents, filth, and crime, but the city only adds more “homeless services” that do not make city streets safer or cleaner. Sound Transit is building (very gradually and always behind schedule and over budget) out a light rail system, which carries few passengers except for game days, and carries many homeless drug addicts everywhere it goes. They have not been enforcing collection of fares from every passenger, and riders constantly complain of even new cars stinking of urine, feces, and fentanyl. In fact, last weekend the latest rail section, across Lake Washington to Mercer Island and Bellevue just opened, to a cheering group of politicians and riders. Here is what happened.
But wait for the best part of it:
The ones who predicted that light rail would bring Seattle to the East Side were proven correct very quickly.
Now that the State Legislature has passed the “homeless for all” bill, allowing homeless encampments everywhere in the state and forbidding cities to outlaw them, Seattle will be spreading everywhere, with few controls. Seattle now has a socialist mayor who has vowed to vastly increase the number of shelter beds available, not considering the unfortunate fact that Seattle’s street vagrants are not required to accept ANY services offered them. Seattle homeless regularly refuse shelter, due to the fact that shelters all have rules and codes of conduct that they do not want to be bound by.
It is well-known that “Housing First” is the policy in Seattle. However, housing lack is NOT the main driver of homelessness here, it is MENTAL ILLNESS and DRUG ADDICTION, which usually go together. See those tiny houses above? Most of the occupants of those little housing units are drug users, and believe me they do not take care of those little shelters. When one is vacated, they must be deep-cleaned to get rid of the smoke, trash, excrement, and drug residue left behind.
Plymouth Housing, the main provider of “shelter” manages numerous shelters and tiny-house villages in the Puget Sound area, and they are mostly “low-barrier” places. Low-barrier means that residents are allowed to continue their hard-drug use while in their units, and large numbers of those drug users are also dealers, and sellers of other stolen or forbidden property. Essentially, Seattle-area homeless are allowed to engage in various forms of harmful and illegal activity, with the tacit approval of local authorities. And it is actually pretty rare for one of the homeless people to actually improve their situation enough to get jobs or permanent housing.
Another piece of information about those Homeless-Industrial Complex non-profits is that, from the millions of taxpayer dollars they take in every year, the vast majority of their well-paid executives donate thousands of those dollars right back to the DemocRat Party whose government grants support their activities. It’s a very handy money-laundering scheme, and the wider society suffers from all the filth, crime, and drug-overdoses seen on literally a daily basis in Seattle, and now the East Side.
Seattle is still dying, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. The response of the public has been dismay, complaints, and voting with their feet.
Both businesses and individuals/families are planning an exodus from Seattle.
Calling-all-RushBabes 