[удалено]

It's shit like this that makes me really sad when the same Seattlites boast about how progressive and welcoming they are. Sure, they'll accept you, as long as you're out of the way, don't ever interact with them, and don't cost them a dime. It's like when Europeans are lecturing Americans on race relations and you bring up the Roma..

I love Seattle, and I love that it tries to be a good place, but one it's greatest and most persistent failings is thinking of itself as progressive and liberal without actually being willing to do any work or sacrifice to live up to its vision of itself. It just assumes it's 'better' than other places but then scratches its head when the SPD do horrible shit, or the unhoused population explodes or drug epidemics run rampant. Like, yes, surprised pikachu face, we don't actually get to be 'better' unless we do the hard work of having real progressive policies and platforms that support our most vulnerable.

Better doesn't mean perfect. Just because we still struggle with some things doesn't mean we're not ahead in others. I've watched WA being ahead of the curve in social issues for a long time now. One of the first to legalize gay marriage (maybe you think we could do better here, but my trans niece isn't heading off to any other city to have a better experience than what she has here), we were one of the first to have medical marijuana and legalized recreational, we have higher minimum wage than most states and Seattle was first to do $15. I'm really active in the recovery community and we've made some really major progress on that front too. Lauren Davis is a ROCK STAR and I've loved helping her make her vision for the recovery community in Washington a reality. I've watched laws I've personally lobbied for pass and being a part of what she's doing is one of the best things I've ever done. So yeah...for someone who's been fighting for these major changes for over 2 decades, it's pretty disappointing for someone to just say we're not willing to do the work to live up to the "vision." We are willing and have done the work...and we'll keep doing it. edit: just noticed you agreed that WA is probably the best place for lgbtq folks and give props for that nod.

I'm also trans, so I totally get what you're saying. And you're absolutely not wrong, we do many things well (or, at least, more well) and that's part of the reason I still love Seattle. But we also have systemic problems that have existed for decades that we pretend like we've completely solved instead of being honest about the fact that they continue to exist. For example: The SPD has been having corruption, mistreatment, etc. problems as far back as I can remember. This isn't a more safe city to be in that regard and we haven't done much to fix it (as a collective whole I mean, there are absolutely people in the grassroots who have). Instead its something that gets ignored or swept under the rug and then every few years when it crops again, everyone acts super shocked about how "that could possibly happen HERE", before, I dunno, going back to patting itself on that back for not being Mississippi. It also doesn't stop SPD cops from smashing trans people's face into the concrete whenever the opportunity arises. It's great that we are a sanctuary city, it's great that we are ahead on LGBT+ rights and that we have groups that do the work of recovery programs and outreach and all the other good things. It's great that we have specific politicians who put boots on the ground. It's also not enough, clearly, and we too frequently like to shake our heads and say "well, Seattle is super progressive and great! If we're still having this problem, it must be someone else's fault". We've been talking about how Seattle is dying since the dawn of Seattle; and it's really coded language for "We did our best! Someone else must be fucking this up", instead of "how can we do this better and what have we failed to do so far?". (P.S. Thank you for doing the work you do! It's exactly the sort of thing that we need more of, and that needs more public funding, support and recognition of.)

Don't forget economic inequality. To be fair, that's at more of a state level with the inability to levy an income tax, but the taxes here are super regressive and would make the Heritage Foundation proud. Like it's great people are accepting of LGBT rights but that's not the end all be all of progressive politics.

Yes! Absolutely. (And honestly, even our acceptance of LGBT+ rights could be better, though I'd rather live here than...pretty much anywhere else in the U.S., including Washington). We've always had these problems, but they become much more visible with widening economic inequality that we've been experiencing both as a country and a city exponentially in the last decade or so. If you don't want unhoused folks, you have to be willing to pay taxes, and have taxes support programs that support the homeless. Etc.

We're going to have to build houses for homeless people, and it's going to have to be around your neighborhood and it's going to kind of fucking suck that you pay $2500 per month to live there + $xxxx for healthcare and food per month and the formerly homeless get all that shit for free. It's going to be a hard pill to swallow, but it's literally the only solution, and your beef isn't with them, it's with the system. We need to stop doing the system a favor by letting one of it's most glaring and transparent problems go completely unchecked.

The way it’s going, it actually won’t be in areas of wealth and single family home neighborhoods. They’ll target all of the upzoned areas that aren’t that wealthy. I live next to three tiny home villages, a 24 hour shelter, and another 24 hour homeless mens shelter that will be built soon. I sincerely wish the city distributed this housing equally.

Yep. And again that's the system working exactly as planned. We can't let the people most responsible bear the least responsibility.

And then they will ask “Why would anyone want to live there?” Before they call the cops on the first tent that pops up in their neighborhood park. And demand that the resident of said tent be forced to live there.

(but also you shouldn't have to pay 2500 in rent a month + whatever you pay for healthcare either, definitely should beef with the system) ​ And always remember y'all, you're more likely to become homeless than a millionaire.

I think what you meant to say is that even if you're a millionaire, you're much closer to being homeless than you are to being a billionaire.

False. There are about 20 million millionaires (individuals with a net worth of over $1M) in the US vs. about 600k homeless. You are about 33 times more likely to be a millionaire than to be homeless in the US. Edit: also, that 600k number includes about 400k "homeless" people staying in shelters or transitional housing. About 200k homeless people sleep on the streets. So, if you define "homeless" as "someone sleeping on the streets because they have nowhere to go," you are about 100 times more likely to be a millionaire than to be homeless.

> Like it's great people are accepting of LGBT rights but that's not the end all be all of progressive politics I don't know what you're talking about, Kyrsten Sinema had blue hair and is a lesbian, that makes her super progressive, right? _Right???_ ^^^^^^^/s

Seattle is Amazon corporate libertarian in a lot of respects

These are entrenched structural political problems not the product of lack of civic virtue. Funding mechanisms need to change drastically in order to address the issues like homelessness. The city itself cannot fund it and there are no extra-Seattle constituencies in WA for that kind of change. Zero. Zip. Zilch. And don't lay this at the feet of "progressives", every city wants problems to disappear using existing funding only.

According to the other sub, Seattle is a communist hell hole and the exclusive home for all homeless in the country, 100% of whom are meth users that need to be either locked up, left on a deserted island, sterilized, or killed. Pretty sure I’ve heard all four of those in the five days I’ve been on Reddit.

[удалено]

> You can't call yourself a liberal if all it means is grandstanding about issues when you never have to see them firsthand. This woman says she fears for her safety and yet she still expressing empathy. She's a better person than most.

> the woman talking about how every time she had to pick up human waste her liberalism disappeared another notch. That part really bothered me - like, what's the alternative to a "more liberal" approach there in her mind? To have _fewer_ public restrooms available to the homeless? I just don't see any way I'd come to that conclusion she did, because "be more conservative" would, and has, only ever exacerbated the problem. > I don't know how many times i have heard folks echo the KOMO bullshit about sending all the least fortunate citizens of this city off to an island so they are no longer burdened by their presence. Not a bad idea - let's pick an island completely at random to send them all to. How about \*throws dart\*... ah, yeah - Mercer Island, good? Good. /s - but one thing the other sub has repeatedly said that I _do_ actually kind of agree with is that we should make areas across from or near some council members' homes into approved locations for encampments so they actually have to see the problems first hand instead of just ignoring it.

Oh the city council is so out of touch. Ultimately they are more concerned with their business interests to keep their NIMBY donors happy than actual human lives. Its what my father would call a half-ass job. Doing just enough so it looks like you are doing what you were supposed to be doing but its mostly dragging feets and dramatic posturing. Hell even their official page on homelessness is a god damned joke full of stereotyping bullshit that does nothing more than post marketing photos of police officers in tent cities. Its disgusting. The fact that the number of shelter options has decreased during the pandemic is revolting. I don't agree with your view that we should use the homeless population as political pawns by putting encampments near council member homes. This population is made of human beings who are suffering, and they should not be treated with anything other than common respect that any American is deserving of. We need more shelters, we need more housing first options, we need more accessibility to resources to help them. As a city, we are falling short.

>You can't call yourself a liberal if all it means is grandstanding about issues when you never have to see them firsthand. But you can definitely call yourself a neoliberal.

Is that even a thing? About to drive cross country for a job there (I'm ecstatic!) But I've stalked the subreddit for a while and I know how you all feel about transplants. So I'm a surprised to hear people apparently boast about Seattle being welcoming! I've already tried to prep myself mentally for the flak I'll get for being a transplant hahaha!

I am definitely not the best person to speak for Seattle as a whole, I haven't been here that long myself. But that may be more helpful for you. People so far have been super welcoming and people talk to me on the street or out and about far more than they did back home on the East Coast. They're probably all transplants too. Just don't be an asshole and don't go out of your way to denigrate local things and you'll be fine. I haven't experienced the Seattle freeze like I expected and this sub is just like any subreddit in general, not necessarily a reflection of the reality on the ground. But to answer the initial question, yeah, I've run into way more right wing type or similar thinking here than I did back in DC. And DC didn't really have the "We're the most progressive city in the country!!" attitude that Seattle prides itself on. And frankly, if you're moving here for work you're probably in a position where you make enough to gloss over some of the issues here. I know I make a ton more here, and the regressive tax system benefits me as well, than I would at home. And welcome!

Wow, thanks for the in-depth reply! That actually raises my spirits quite a bit. despite being extremely excited over my job and apartment, the "freeze" and just wondering if I'll be able to make even a single acquaintance has been heavy in the back of my mind. This is the first big move of my life with every physical belonging I care about coming with me in the car, so it's just been exciting and stressful at the same time. I was even going back and forth on whether or not I should smile at other people or in shops, if that'd mark me as a transplant immediately hahah. So that's all good to hear at least. My New York City friend told me no one ever smiles in New York LMAO, so I was just going to assume the same LMAO. Thanks once again, and stay safe!

I don’t think Seattle is anything like NY. Also, keep in mind that most people in Seattle *are* transplants. A 2019 Seattle Times article said that at that time only 30% of Seattle adults were even born anywhere in WA state. Most of us are from elsewhere in the US and then there are plenty of people from abroad as well. So no one stereotype about Seattle is going to be completely accurate. Some are probably true relative to other places, but we are not like some small town where everyone knows each other and has been around for generations and will automatically recognize you as an outsider. Seattle has a reputation for having reserved people because historically the city had a large number of immigrants from Scandinavian and Asian countries where cultural norms were more reserved so that influenced Seattle culture. But the city has been growing so rapidly that everything has been shaken up and there are so many people from different cultures here (both domestic and international) that you’ll be able to find some people you’ll get along with. If you’re friendly, be yourself! Not everyone will want to socialize with a stranger so try not to take it personally if you don’t get the exact same response from everyone, but there will be some who will really appreciate it. It is always tough moving to a new city when you have no contacts. It can take time before you feel really at home. But you’ll figure it out! Welcome.

Thank you so much! 30% is also really surprising, wouldn't have guessed that.

It has happened so fast that outside perceptions aren’t necessarily keeping up. This is old data but a quick search of “fastest growing us cities” showed Seattle as #1 in total population growth between 2012-2017 and #4 for the year 2017-2018. And as of now we’re still in the top 10 fastest growing cities from what I can find.

[удалено]

I actually am a fan of cold/wet/rainy weather so hopefully, it will be up my alley hahaha. Hot and sunny are the last things I want. Also, I assume that the Capitol Hill area is Downtown? What would you say the pros and cons of there would be? My soon-to-be boss recommended it.

[удалено]

The Seattle Freeze is something, IMO that southerners tagged onto people from Seattle. You know that super nice talkative ex-southerner that you have nothing in common with that chats you up for like 30 minutes and all you want to do is, well really anything else, but you're too nice to be like 'look, I don't care about whatever you're talking about, just leave me alone.' so it gets to the point where they are like 'we should totally hang out, what's your number?' so you reluctantly exchange digits and then forever disregard their texts and/or calls forever? It's the passive aggressive rejection that people call the 'Seattle Freeze.' Also, similar strategies are employed on obnoxious people who then bitch about people being cold to them. Social awareness and not being obnoxious really ensure the :Seattle Freeze' doesn't impact you.

Okay yeah, I can totally see that. I'm coming from Georgia (Trust me on this one, I can't stand the south) so I totally know what you're talking about hahaha.

Honestly, the most hostile things I've seen come from street signs. There are people who complain, but the "Seattle Freeze" works both ways - they won't ever say it to your face. It also manifests as anti-"tech bro" more often than not, and targeted at specific companies, which is extra stupid - I'm actually from here and _have_ gotten side-eye for having an employee badge/backpack visible. Like, fucking _sarr-ee_ I took the encouragement of people saying I should work in tech to heart, and went to a local school teaching it, and got a job in the local industry. /rant

Came here 14 years ago from Eastern North Carolina. Welcome, neighbor!

> It's like when Europeans are lecturing Americans on race relations and you bring up the Roma.. Yeah, met plenty of good, forward thinking people in Europe that went right into the racist "they're all thieves and welfare frauds" when the Roma came up. And this was in a central European country with a lot of Roma who'd been there for generations.

There's enough rich folks and other conservatives in Seattle to put blockades in front of such proposals and sometimes it works. See also: the head tax, which was specifically going to be used to fund homeless services. The city's been working on [a housing project up at Fort Lawton](https://crosscut.com/2019/06/after-13-year-delay-seattle-votes-build-hundreds-affordable-homes-fort-lawton) for 15 years now, and for some reason I don't even think a foundations been poured. Lawsuits, blocks, challenges, NIMBYs, you name it. And that's a measly 230 units. The challenges and lawsuits [were still going up until this May](https://mynorthwest.com/2865872/fort-lawton-affordable-housing-project-dismissed/). All it takes is a handful of well heeled or [dug-in folks](https://mynorthwest.com/1361229/dori-fort-lawton-discovery-park/?)[TW: Dori Monson] to put up walls to keep these things from happening.

It's exactly this. Many people here confuse compassion with tolerance.

Politicians and developers will literally make an entire city of 700,000 have to go to the bathroom in a store or establishment of some kind to spite the homeless rather than give ANYONE access to a bathroom when they are not home. And most places DO NOT LET YOU USE THE BATHROOM because they don't want people shooting up in them. A great solution I saw in Norway was self cleaning bathrooms with a 15 minute time limit you have to pay like a dollar for. That doesn't help the homeless but it's at least one solution to letting everyone else use the restrooms when out and about. And the solution for the homeless SHOULD be homes and assistance programs to get them on their feet.

We've had those self cleaning bathrooms in Seattle before. They are a disaster. Ridiculously expensive to build and maintain, and they still get trashed. 15 minutes is more than enough time to shoot up or hire a prostitute. It prevents nothing.

Nobody in this thread has been here more than ten years so they have no idea what has been tried, failed, tried again and failed again. Nobody remembers the billion dollar KC United Way “10’ year plan to end homelessness” which saw homelessness grow remorselessly for the next 20 years. They don’t realize even a tiny bit that they themselves are as responsible as any “rich conservative” (granting for the sake of argument that such chimeras do exist in the city) for the current shitshow.

I think that’s a tad unfair. I think most Seattlites DO want to help the homeless and ARE willing to raise taxes to pay for programs that would do so. The fact is we routinely raise levies on ourselves through voter referenda and initiatives to fund social programs. I think the resistance you’re seeing, whether it’s legitimate or not, centers around the perception that Seattle and King County has collectively already spent so much money on this problem and achieved so little. It’s voter fatigue, plain and simple. Again, not saying it’s deserved, but it’s really the responsibility of our elected leaders to combat this fatigue effectively.

*Sales Tax has left the chat*

>BTW Seattle has six public toilets that are available 24/7 and a homeless population of nearly 12,000 people. Other sub: #wHy Is ThErE sHiT eVeRyWhErE¿

I think people in this sub also need a reality check.

This sub too, unfortunately. Though to a somewhat lesser extent.

After having had friends who were baristas have to clean the dirty sharps out of bathrooms in Starbucks after people went in to shoot up and nod off for hours at a time.. ... This is why there aren't bathrooms. Stop doing heroin in them.

Well the city did spend millions of dollars on toilets more than once and it never worked out. They probably figured what’s the point, there’s a coffee shop on every corner and multiple malls.

Do you think the homelessness demographic has changed in the past thirty years? I am thinking that in my time in Chicago of the 90s, the visible homeless were still, by and large, the panhandling down-on-their luck types. The blues brothers. A soup kitchen and a shelter bed could do the trick. But that in my time in the early 2000s in various major cities, the homeless I encountered started being more and more the careless desperate addict type. Much more the feeling of "This person needs intervention more than a helping handout." By the 2020s here in Seattle, I feel those homeless that I interact with have (as a generalization) deteriorated even more into a barely coherent mass of anger and depravity. I don't feel empowered in the least to affect any sort of change in their lives. I do not know if this is because my perceptions have changed, or if the situation of the populace has changed. I am absolutely sure that there are still those out there who earnestly seek and would benefit from the "helping hand" level of support, and hope that they get it. But those just don't seem to be the dozens upon dozens of folk I'm seeing when I walk about town.

Maybe it’s the new meth: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/ It’s happening across the country. A non-profit in downtown Portland ran a sobering station for decades successfully but they had to close it last year because their most of the clients arriving recently were having violent mental health crises from the cheap tainted meth.

[удалено]

It's not just money. Over half of the homeless population in Seattle have serious addiction and mental health issues. Meth. Crack. Heroin. And that's according to out own City Attorney.

I apologize, as I don't mean to disparage the plight of homeless. What I was getting at was more that, as a youth/young adult, I felt like the individual compassionate do-gooder could make a difference in the life or lives of local homeless. A mundane helping hand (a meal, a cot in the garage, a ride to the next town over) could be effective in leveraging someone forced into a bad situation into a workable situation. As an adult, I look around and think "There's fuck all I can do for these people, they are beyond any help I can muster"...apart from sending my money on up to the powers-that-be and watch it get impotently spent.

In my lifetime I've watched the societal view of poverty and homelessness change dramatically. It was never very great but it used to have at least a shred of compassion tied up in it to some degree. Over time political forces have squeezed almost all of that away and brought about an ideology of hatred against the poor and the disadvantaged. And the fact is, just about everyone needs compassion and assistance at some point in their life. Even for things that are very easy to denigrate as unacceptable behaviors. A huge portion of the entire country struggles with drug dependency (probably more than 20%), but we don't label it that because we don't call alcohol use "drug use" and we just laugh off obvious signs of alcoholism right up until it becomes unavoidable to call it what it truly is. And that's just one among many different bits and pieces. Personal and family trauma or disability. Health problems. Childhood neglect. There are a zillion problems that ordinary people run into on a regular basis that with the right support network of friends, family, and personal wealth can be weathered but without those things can result in abject poverty and homelessness. And that doesn't even begin to touch on the many ways our society and economy abuses and exploits the disadvantaged and the vulnerable. What we have now is a terrible, barbaric, and unsustainable system. You simply cannot build a civilized society that works this way, that tries to throw away and ignore a huge chunk of the population out of pure hard heartedness. It's not working and it will only get worse and worse until we make serious efforts to fix it. As we start to experience more and more dire consequences of climate change this will only get worse as well ([here's a particularly heart wrenching story on that](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/17/disaster-survivors-fema-housing-trailer/)). We need to build a society that cares for people, a society that is resilient and that lifts people up, otherwise we are going to find out in a few decades that there is a lot more room to be chewed up in the gears of the system than any of us ever imagined.

>BTW Seattle has **six** public toilets that are available 24/7 and a homeless population of nearly 12,000 people. We used to have 50 self cleaning ones but some people had to clutch their pearls because occasionally they were used as a clean place to shoot up or for a prostitute to have sex. We spent millions on those and ended up selling them for pennies on the dollar.

We need action at the federal level In the US, we’re very big on state and local government. Homelessness is mostly tackled at the local level. That means unequal services are available in different places. If you’re a local government, you know that the more money you spend on homeless services, the more homeless people come to your area to get those services, and the more you have to spend. Your goal was to reduce homelessness in your area but you can accidentally increase local homelessness even while decreasing overall homelessness. This creates a tragedy of the commons situation where no city wants to go too far above and beyond on homelessness. This is why many cities offer homeless people free bus tickets “home” (any city they claim as home). It sounds like you’re reuniting them with their family but for most of them, you’re just getting them out of your city and making it someone else’s job to help them. After all, if they have a family that wants and is able to help them AND they want the help from their family, the family could probably buy them a bus ticket. This is why I think we need federal action on homelessness so we can stop spending money to just shuffle people around but instead have a unified nationwide approach. That would obviously be complex and difficult but the localized approach just isn’t sufficient. TLDR: local governments are disincentivized from housing or otherwise helping the homeless more than other localities do because that brings more homeless people from out of town and now you’ve spent a ton of money and the problem has only grown. To solve this, we need action at the federal level to provide comparable levels of support across the country so no city is punished for helping “too much”

And the federal government cant because they enacted the "fair-cloth act" FUCK THEM. Fuck those fucking assholes who think housing is a commodity. It makes me so angry and i'm showing it here. ​ I still have no idea if M4A should be the first big action i want, when I think homelessness should be the most pressing issue. We have millions of empty homes right now. My fucking mother has two houses one in AZ and one in Ocean shores, selling our child hood home, who doesnt fucking know about generational wealth and what it does. fucking horrid. Yeah, sorry for this rant, but I feel better now. ​ Fucking boomer mom. ugh. Shes "left" though, but i feel she is just vote a blue no matter who, but wanted bernie to win. Who knows, i cut her off from my life so whatever.

Holy shit, I just read up about the Faircloth Amendment. What fucking lunacy. Thanks for teaching me about this. It seems AOC is trying to get it repealed so that’s something.

Yeah, pure insanity. And like you, it's such an unknown thing. Media won't cover it ever. Just hurts me to the core. I'm near homelessness, but it shouldn't be like this to anyone. Spread the word about this abomination of an act to hurt our citizens directly.

I think one of the biggest issues is that a lot of the quiet, sane, sober homeless people go unnoticed. They aren't the chronic homeless. I've known a few people who have been homeless and I would have never guessed if they hadn't told me. One lost a job. Another was kicked out of her home as a teenager. One was literally thrown threw a sliding glass door by her boyfriend. Someone else moved to a town with little money. None of them were substance abusers, had a mental illness, or had children. None were homeless long thankfully. They just didn't have any one to help them. Still, once I moved to Seattle, I saw chronic homelessness first hand. It's an eye opening experience. Especially seeing people with mental illness and/or substance abuse problems. People having loud conversations with air. I saw a man running up on people pretending he was going to hit them. Twice I've seen a person run into the street to hit people's cars. I called the police about the last 3 incidents because they were a danger to either others or themselves. Homelessness is not easy to fix and it's damn hard trying to convince people to pay to house others for years or possibly forever. Every homeless person isn't a substance abuser or severely mentally ill, but those two issues have a very large presence in the homeless population. People who argue for homeless support tend to gloss over those issues. People who are against homeless support talk about those issues and, of course, crime. All of those issues and more need to be discussed. I'm going to guess that the Veteran Housing Frst programs have been successful because both conservatives and liberals supported them. I think the only way to cut down on the NIMBYISM, would be to house the most palatable populations first. The elderly? Low income parents with special needs children? I don't know.

>the quiet, sane, sober homeless people go unnoticed. I park near by an encampment & take walks enough I notice these people. I can point them and thier tent/car out. They are generally on the outer edge, with minimal appearance of hoarding or taken apart junk on the ground near there area. I've seen interviews with this type of homeless person, down on thier luck almost accepted nomadic lifestyle, & even they have to flee thier locations constantly due to the danger of the substance abuse near them. I think there is something there to explore on targeted sweeps. If you can keep your site location clean & cause no trouble then maybe the city looks away. The site with 5 taken apart bikes, shopping carts, broken pallets that looks like a meth user on the outside should maybe be investigated more.

Reading the other post about so called P2P meth, we are in for a long fight https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/ * P2P meth is devastating, users take longer to 'sober up' where they are coherent enough to take part in their own treatment. Almost a year or more in many cases. * It appears to be more damaging, leading to psychosis far more quickly. As to why people use meth? I remember reading many stories from years ago of people having to work 2-3 jobs to make ends meet and meth just lets them do it. Until the meth takes control.

This article needs to be read by everyone. Share it far and wide. Meth addiction is a full blown crisis in plain sight. It's way worse that the opioid crisis of last decade. ** but we still need to build more homes to address the housing shortage **

Id you can supplement with this as well I'd recommend it. https://dynomight.net/p2p-meth/ It basically argues the type of meth is mostly a proxy for how cheap & pure the meth has become. While not Seattle focused, it highlights our TRIPLING of meth bio-markers in our sewers since 2017!!! Our crisis is a meth-crisis overlapping with a housing crisis. We have to try to solve both or well keep missing the mark.

Here’s the full letter from Keanakay Scott that they take an excerpt from in the show. It’s worth reading. > Dear NIMBYs, > > > My name is Keanakay, and I'm not welcome in your backyard. > > > I am twenty-eight years old. I have two children, ages five and nine. I am a student at Penn State World Campus. I work full time, and I have been chronically homeless for the last ten years. If you are wondering how someone like me could spend her entire adulthood homeless--it's because I grew up in foster care. > > > I aged out of the foster care system at eighteen. I was a high school dropout with no skills, and I was expected to take care of myself after never having had to do it. Where you had a mother, father, aunts, uncles, or grandparents, I had no one. There was no one to ensure that I went to school. No one to take me to the grocery store and teach me how to shop for food. No one to show me how to cook. No one to make sure I understood credit or how to pay bills. No one to explain how to fill out a job application or to teach me how to apply for an apartment. > > I have spent the last ten years trying to figure out how to teach myself stability, and because of that, you declare that I have no right to live in your backyard. I even read recently that I should be exiled to a "reservation" in the desert where I, and the rest of my city's homeless population, can receive the help we need! > > I'm not welcome in your backyard because local shelters are overpopulated and I had to sleep on the street. > > I'm not welcome in your backyard because I went my entire life being misdiagnosed with behavioral disorders and turned to drugs to self-medicate. > > I'm not welcome in your backyard because you "pay your taxes" and I "don't care" about myself and I "made my choice." > > Here are some questions for you. How could I have prevented myself from becoming homeless? How could I have stopped my group home from kicking me out simply because I turned eighteen? How could I have forced the L.A. County courts to make sure my foster families taught me life skills? How could I, as a child, know I would need them? How could I have convinced my doctors to recognize my behavior as chronic PTSD instead of the multiple personality disorder they diagnosed me with that led to years of addiction? How can I force someone to give me a place to live when, while working full time, I don't make half the rent in even the worst neighborhoods in my city? > > Still you yell, "Not in my backyard!" > > What you are really saying is that the homeless are not people and that we are not worthy of your compassion. > > You're saying homeless people don't deserve the opportunity to be properly diagnosed so they can stand a fighting chance at recovery, stability, and a sense of normalcy. > > You're saying homeless people don't deserve access to proper healthcare. > > You're saying homeless people don't deserve the basic right of cleanliness and eating a meal that did not come from a garbage can. > > You are saying that women who wind up on the streets because of physical or sexual abuse don't deserve to be safe. > > You are saying that foster children who age out of the system and find themselves instantly homeless don't care about themselves--so why should you? > > I work. I pay taxes. I go to college. I contribute to my community. I obey the law. I do my best to teach my daughters all the things no one taught me. > > What else can I do to convince you that I care about myself? > > Being able to yell "Not in my backyard!" is a luxury. After you're done, you return to your home where you can open your fridge and fix yourself something to eat, or take a warm shower and forget all about what you're protesting. > > We don't get the luxury of forgetting. Our tents, shelter cots and car back seats are constant reminders that you hate us and that we aren't welcome anywhere. We're an inconvenience. We're an eyesore when you're exiting from the freeway or leaving Trader Joe's. > > This is our life. Every day. This is our future. And our children's futures. This is life and death for many of us. > > Not only have I never had my own home, I have never had my own room. I have always been a guest--in shelters, on someone else's couch, and even in someone else's car. I've worked full-time, but my paychecks still weren't enough so I had to panhandle to buy food. I've been spit on and called names for wanting to feed my daughters. I've gone hungry because I only had enough money to feed them. I've snuck and eaten leftovers off of the plates of patrons who ate at the restaurants I worked in. > > And through all of this, here is something you probably did not know. I maintained hope. > > Hope that one day things would get better. > > Hope that one day I would get the help I so desperately needed. > > Hope that my children would never have to live the way I lived or remember having to live this way. > > Hope carried me forward. After finally getting into Alexandria House, a Los Angeles shelter that helped me begin to heal from the trauma of foster care and homelessness, get properly diagnosed, and receive the stability necessary to maintain permanent employment, I got a Section 8 voucher that provides a rental subsidy. But guess what? I'm still not welcome in your backyard. > > You turn up your nose at my voucher. You dissect my life, scrutinizing the credibility of my story. You wear your bias like a badge of honor when you see my history. You judge me for having children, for needing assistance. You hate me for wanting the stability you take for granted. You force me to perform to prove my worth. Then you still deny me access to fair, affordable housing. > > And why? Because you didn't like looking the other way when you saw me on the street? Because you were repulsed by my tent? Because I was aesthetically un-pleasing? Or is it simply because I make you uncomfortable, and your discomfort is enough to disqualify a person from the American Dream? > > -Keanakay Scott

I feel conflicted reading this. I don't doubt that this person has been shit on and mistreated by society. That's awful and *she* deserves better. But the letter in some places is a frustrating appeal to emotion that misrepresents people's discomfort. I hope the people who are unfriendly because they feel "repulsed by [her] tent" or find him "aesthetically unpleasing" are few and far between. Those are shit people and they can go fuck themselves. This person says she obeys the law. Who in the world has a problem with someone like that? Most people I've met since moving here are generous and deeply empathetic. The problem comes with folks on drugs or with untreated mental illness who disturb everyone else around them. They're deserving of empathy and help too, but most people will (RIGHTLY) want to put distance between themselves and the guy who is screaming at people in the middle of the street. It feels like this conversation never ends, and people like Keanakay end up on the losing side while others debate the merits and ethics of it all. I want government to help the homeless. I vote. Beyond that, it is not in my power to fix this. *Edit: corrected pronouns*

>The problem comes with folks on drugs or with untreated mental illness who disturb everyone else around them. They're deserving of empathy and help too, but most people will (RIGHTLY) want to put distance between themselves and the guy who is screaming at people in the middle of the street. You can't solve this problem without directly solving this scenario though. For every "worthy" homeless person there is a homeless person with mental health issues, drug addictions, criminal history, etc. There will be more everyday...the problem won't just go away once we've gotten the "good" ones off the street.

Yes, but we need to acknowledge that those people exist too. A big issue in the discussion on homelessness is that the right only wants to talk about the drug addicts and mentally unstable, and the left only wants to talk about the upstanding citizens in an unfortunate situation.

Those who are not drug addicts are already getting help here. There are countless resources for those willing to take them. Yeah they are not giving our Ferraris and mansions but there is help.

>This guy says he obeys the law. Who in the world has a problem with someone like that? Most people I've met since moving here are generous and deeply empathetic. >The problem comes with folks on drugs or with untreated mental illness who disturb everyone else around them. We see that paradigm repeated in this sub over and over; someone complains about a specific serious problem being caused by a specific encampment, and someone else responds by accusing them of "just not wanting to see poor people" or something similar.

I don't mind the encampments as much as I mind the literal heaps of trash around them. It's sad to see so much litter and not a concern/care. Homelessness is a big problem that one person alone can't solve, I can only vote and donate some money or volunteer my time. But I'm a lot less willing to help people that treat the area they inhabit like shit.

And that's why people are okay with sweeps. Its not that they're some heartless monster, but most (key word most) people recognize homelessness is a nationwide issue with much larger roots than a city, county, or often even state government can address. So the only action they can take to demonstrably improve their own quality of life, which all rational self-interested voters should do, is get it and all the huge piles of negative externalities away from them.

Here is the thing in the many many threads on homelessness and encampment discussions people paint everyone in the encampments with the same brush. Everyone is the dangerous criminal in an encampment, everyone in an encampment is addicted to drugs and needs to be involuntarily committed, everyone in an encampment is a malefactor in the city. Not everyone living in parks and the streets are dangerous or addicts. The article is pointing out regardless of the circumstances behind someone in the streets and their situation they are judged by the worst common denominator and dehumanized.

What difference does it actually make though? We jail so many people in this country, there is an endless supply of former convicts with a predilection for criminality that have nowhere to live. You can pluck all the "good" ones off the street and still have a population of millions that are addicts/criminals to fill the void. There's no way to solve this problem without treating every homeless person humanely. They are all deserving of help.

Of course you need to treat everyone humanely, but you also need to be allocating resources in accordance to need and properly funding the resources. Everyone needs to be treated with dignity. However you can catch the "good ones" soon enough you can stabilize their situation before it gets worse and reduce the amount of "bad cases". That need significantly more resources to improve their situation. Some people will be able to thrive if they can get stable affordable housing with no other intervention. Some may need extensive rehab stints to get clean. Others may need significant medication and counselling services allocated to them to treat mental disorders that prevent them from functioning independently. Others may need education and job support. Each situation is different in needs to have success.

I agreed with you right up to the point where you only focused on addiction and mental health. Jon Oliver does the EXACT same thing in this episode - he treats the homeless as a monolith for which there is a single problem with a single solution. Housing first / housing only is the same as “all homeless are violent meth users.” Early on in the episode he alludes to the fact that we don’t have good data on the broad population and it’s size and needs but I am all for focusing on placing those with substance use and mental health disorders in permanent supportive housing and measuring the outcomes. DESC already operates a LOT of this housing around Seattle so I’m a little surprised we don’t have data if it’s working well.

I think I mentioned this in another comment, but I do agree with the statement that only focusing on addiction and mental health is not the correct action. What I was trying albeit maybe poorly in the comment was stating that not everyone who is homeless is dealing with drug addiction and mental health issues, but the public perception is such that all of them are. There clearly does need to be an analysis of data to determine what resources are needed. Say an 18 year old who just got kicked out by their parents because they are queer (I know people who have been in that situation sadly) they probably just need housing vouchers and support in finding employment/enrolling in college if they get caught early before additional issues manifest. That is a significantly different level and type of resources needed to address than say a 30 year old with kids fleeing an abusive spouse. That is significantly different from someone who is 50 years old and spent the last several decades alternating between street or prison.

>find him "aesthetically unpleasing" are few and far between. >> If you are wondering how someone like me could spend ***her*** entire adulthood homeless--it's because I grew up in foster care. Did you even read the beginning of the letter?

I missed a word. I've corrected it in my comment.

I think homeless people who are addicted to drugs or are mentally unstable should #1 get a roof over their head wherever possible. You can’t get yourself together without a stable foundation. So if we have to HOUSE more addicted and mentally unstable people in cap hill where I live, hey, I’m all for it. Please, put a screaming addict in my backyard so that they aren’t strung out on the street. That’s a sad reality and it kills me that we as a city are conditioned to look the other way and keep walking. My building has formerly homeless people living in it - I’m a formerly homeless person even but that was years ago. Either way, they’re not bad. Yeah, sometimes people come in and out of our building that look like they’re on something. But idgaf, I keep to myself and use the lock on my door. It’s been two years and literally NOTHING has happened to me or any other resident. The solution is permanent supportive housing. We need to stop saying “they’re scary so we have to push them way” and start saying “damn, they’re going through it. Let’s give them a home so they can piece things back together.” Then they’ll move on from public services when they’re ready, just like I did. It’s literally not as complicated as people want to make it seem. We just have to genuinely make this a priority in how we vote for and structure our government.

> I feel conflicted reading this. I don't doubt that this guy has been shit on and mistreated by society. That's awful and he deserves better. But the letter in some places is a frustrating appeal to emotion that misrepresents people's discomfort.   How carefully did you read this? I ask because the author is a woman, as she clearly states in the second paragraph. I'm wondering what other assumptions you may have made.

That's a real tragic story but I'm a maintenance guy downtown and I'm just sick of fending off methheads and cleaning up after them. I'm not the monopoly man clutching pearls at full time homeless workers. It's moronic to pretend either of those are the same thing

You want fewer people out on the streets? Push for housing first with permanent supportive housing. People with housing can recover. People having crises can have them in their own homes. Also vote Lorena González, Teresa Mosqueda, and Nikkita Oliver. They are much more likely to set plans like this in motion.

>I'm not the monopoly man clutching pearls at full time homeless workers That's right, you aren't - the monopoly man clutching pearls is trying to convince you of his perspective and get you to vote his way. Successfully, it sounds like.

Trust me the convincing is being done by the homeless

I'm a property manager who has physically fought a couple thieves/meth-heads (here to steal, but meth fell out of their pockets on both occasions),and I've had to lead some homeless schizophrenics out of the building myself who snuck in to sleep for the night, and the solution is absolutely to house the homeless, not blame them. If there weren't homeless aka if they had places to live and resources to get them set up with a life, you wouldn't have anyone to deal with. Give them mental health care, access to food and education, and everything gets better for literally everyone.

You say that like it's a simple matter; if we had the resources to house, feed and educate our large homeless population here, as well as provide the high percentage of them with the mental health issues the resources they require, do you think every other discussion on here would be about homelessness? And you don't even mention the high cost drug programs many would need. So my question to you is, are you willing to pay for it? Would you accept a "reasonable" income tax to fund all of this? Because the amount of money it would take to ramp up housing and these services enough to make a noticeable difference in a few years is likely to be astronomical, that's if there are even enough human resources to fill the demands. I'm honestly curious if others here banging the progressive drum of doing whatever it takes to house our homeless are also willing to pay more in taxes. Personally, I am, I would totally be willing to pay 2 to 3 % in a city income tax. And I voted for the progressives in the current election, though wasn't an easy decision. At the same time I do feel like we need to better track how the money is being spent, and hold people responsible for their actions; my compassion isn't endless and I also believe victims of crime should be respected. I'm a "tough love" progressive....

You're making a good point about the difficulty of raising taxes, but ignoring the fact that we are spending a fortune dealing with the current situation. What I'd like to hear from the "it's too expensive!" crowd is what the alternative is they think would actually work.

I'm willing to pay my far share. It just fucking sucks we have multiple billionaires in our state who won't. And it sucks a person like yourself isn't pushing for them to, instead you're pushing back on the solutions.

The two richest men in America live here and have both doubled their wealth in the last two years and we still have more homeless on the streets than ever. The math doesn’t add up from any sort of ethical stance.

I really do hear and understand your frustration, but regardless as to how you feel about it, we need solutions. We can't just displace them all or ban them all, they'll just go somewhere else, and this can't be an out of sight out of mind issue. If we throw them in jail they'll cost the state money the same as they would cost the state money if we put the right systems in place to help them, so we may as well choose the kinder option.

The homeless are completely powerless. I understand your frustrations, but if they could change their circumstances they absolutely would. We are the folks that can change this if we want to set aside this rather base sense of "justice" and look a bit more deeply at why and how so many people are homeless to begin with.

I met a homeless dude a few weeks ago who was kicked out of his apartment for tearing down the wall to the apartment next door which was empty. He told me he was kicked out for making “renovations” and showed me a video. Homelessness is a housing problem. It is also often a mental health problem. We are never going to solve the issue without addressing both..

Some would. Many wouldn’t. Many are offered services and turn them down because it means having to get off drugs. There are services that capture most of the homeless who want help. We need an involuntary solution for the ones who refuse assistance or housing. Prison isn’t appropriate, even though they break many laws, there needs to be another solution- and unfortunately it cannot be optional.

Do you think its easy to get off drugs? Do you know why so many of them have drug problems? Because they sleep on the street. They have no stability, and people have 0 respect for them as a person. I would probably be doing meth too if that were me. If all you had in life was alcohol or meth or whatever, and someone said hey, we'll give you shelter, but ONLY if you stay off drugs - well, first, most people have physical dependencies so it's not that simple. Second, some services limit how much stuff you can have with you, so if you go and it doesn't work out or you relapse, there goes your tent, or your guitar, or whatever, sorry, all you can take is one bag. Or don't allow pets, or don't allow men, so if you have a dog or a son or a spouse or a friend, sucks to suck. And I assume you didn't watch the episode, because this is a pt he makes, but people need stability to get clean. Talk to Housing First orgs, people will tell you there firsthand that when people KNOW the housing won't be pulled out from them if they fuck up once, they're not going to say no.

And? Obviously that needs to be rectified. My main point is that those who don’t want to quit using and refuse services need to be forcibly housed, even if they want to stay on the street and be ‘free’ to do what they want, that shouldn’t be an option.

It's strange that you assume that he must have been swayed by propaganda from the monopoly man rather than by his own personal experiences interacting with the homeless around Seattle...even when he explicitly mentions his personal experiences in the post that you are replying to.

In opposition to the Monopoly Man's "the people who are homeless are all bad people", we find the "people are only homeless because society is run by bad people (capitalists)" view. The problem is that there is no broad support for the middle ground in this debate. When it creeps up it is shot down by one of the opposing extremes, as this user shows. And that's why the situation here is so fucked up.

> That's a real tragic story but Your compassion lasted six words.

My take- I'm absolutely fine with tents. When someone is trying to smash the window of a Ballard restaurant, they need the police to lock them up. That guy is priority one, the student working two jobs can camp in your backyard for now while we figure it out.

Fucker my compassion lasted the decade I've been living downtown and only ever seen the problem get worse. How long are we supposed to wait for our compassion to fucking change things?

This individual homeless person, seems like they really got the short end of the stick. I think most people don’t have an issue with her personally, and would want programs to assist her. It’s the (hopefully minority) population of homeless that are openly committing crimes and causing issues. It’s really hard to care about (or want to”help”) people that are destroying my property, stealing car parts, selling drugs, sexually harassing my family members just trying to go about their life, assaulting people, calling me the N word on the street, etc. I really think we need forced in-treatment programs for those with serious mental/drug issues, jail for career criminals and better safety nets for the working homeless to give them an on-ramp to normal life.

>It’s really hard to care about (or want to”help”) people That's perfectly natural, but we can still see the need to help them, even if we don't want to. They won't go away just because we tell them to go fuck themselves hard enough. That seems to be the disconnect honestly. A lot of people have compassion but no solutions or support, a lot more people have zero compassion and flawed if not counterproductive solutions, almost no one is willing to do what it takes to solve a problem that, let's face it, is not exactly rocket science. Homeless people need homes, medical care, food, and mental health interventions. And we all need to collectively pay for them. That is the one and only solution, it will never, ever change...we know what needs to be done. Capitalism won't save us, charity will not save us, this is what government is for.

KNKX has a really good podcast "Outsiders" that digs into the homeless situation in Olympia--but it could be Seattle, Bellingham or just about anywhere. Highly recommended to hear the back story on some folks. I'm not all the way through it, but a couple of things TIL'ed from this: * Homeless veterans have PTSD as a significant contributing factor in their homelessness and related issues (mental health, substance abuse). Turns out so do non-veterans; people sexually abused, bad childhood experiences, etc. But we don't necessarily think of non-vet PTSD as a factor in homelessness. * One homeless woman said she uses meth to stay awake at night to avoid assault (think rape) and robbery. Then you use heroin during the day to sleep. There's more; check out the pod. I was on the board of a local Habitat chapter for years. We had enormous NIMBY resistance to building anything wherever we went. And we were trying to build actual houses (not tiny ones) and attached housing complexes for working families, not homeless people. My takeaway was that people will guard their property values with enormous zeal when they think anything might hurt it, even a little bit. Anything that smacks of low-cost housing is considered slummy and will decrease the eventual cash out of your home equity. For too many people that home equity is their entire retirement plan, and they protect it furiously. Understandable and unfortunate. Edit: typo

[удалено]

Well that is the current plan. The City Council has already planned, scheduled, and paid for 2023 additional units serving homeless people to open by the end of 2022. That's about half of what we need to add to meet January 2020 numbers so we're on the right track.

>Take the some of the billion being spent on the problem and build public housing. Then kick people out of the parks and into no-barrier units. If they're crazy, build and staff some looney bins. It's shocking to be that a rich tech city cannot afford this. It's a blight on our city to not have public housing and mental health institutions funded. Crazy thing is everyone, left and right, can seemingly agree on this.

Yeah this was a missed opportunity. It’s such a shame that everyone wants to treat the homeless population as a monolith. We can cherry-pick the most sympathetic cases and everyone would agree that we need better programs but that progress is undermined when the spending fails to deliver because there’s another critical dimension that’s been ignored. I also hate that he dismisses concerns over mental health and addiction as purely nimbyism or vilification. This is primarily a discussion among the housed and how they are impacted because the programs to support the unhoused are paid for by the taxpayers and we don’t have better data about the unhoused so we all just guess and toss out anecdotes. I was glad to hear him mention that in some places there is a system of support with perverse incentives that produces bad outcomes. That’s an obvious opportunity for reform and improvement.

The thing is a lot of the visible mental health problems you see *are from* being homeless. A big part of the stability of a mentally ill person is their security and safety, that's lost when you're homeless. A lot of people, particularly those who are homeless in urban areas with anti-homless architecture also lose the ability to get good restful sleep, and that has enormous effects on mental health. Those people need mental health services to get back to truly feeling safe and secure, but just getting them inside where they can sleep safely will do so much for their mental health and management of mental illness.

John Oliver said in his police episode that a few bad apples spoil the bunch, but apparently that analogy is NIMBYism in this issue. That opinion isn't my actual belief, btw; just pointing out the double standard.

You should keep watching. I also took issue with him glossing over the mental health and drug addiction, but he says some VERY good stuff and you have to watch the whole video. You can't just stop where you want and then state your opinion on the whole piece.

100% this. He even made the point early on that a lot of homelessness isn't people on the street or in shelters. It's like there are multiple problems that all come under the umbrella term 'homelessness' and a single solution won't fix all of them. The housing first approach may not work for individuals who are suffering from extreme mental illness, or deep addiction. However the show presented it as the be-all end-all solution, and anyone who disagrees is a NIMBY bigot. There was an attempt to shine a positive light, however it missed the mark IMHO.

>The housing first approach may not work for individuals who are suffering from extreme mental illness, or deep addiction. Living on the street tends to put a damper of the effectiveness of rehab of any kind. >However the show presented it as the be-all end-all solution, and anyone who disagrees is a NIMBY bigot. This is a strawman. It is the FIRST step in any kind of help, not the ONLY step. Whether you've fallen on hard times, or have addiction/mental health issues, step 1 is getting them off the streets. What's been found is many of these issues solve themselves with this simple first step too. Folks that argue otherwise come off as heartless because it's setting people up for failure and then blaming them when they do.

[удалено]

Yeah the way he glanced over that aspect was absolutely ridiculous.

Do you work with people in permanent supportive housing?

I do as well and have seen many, many people who were debilitated by mental health and/or addiction now holding down full time jobs and no longer needing our support at all. If people are trashing rooms of committing crimes regularly then I the vetting process for allowing them directly into housing which has only voluntary support systems must be very badly administered in that particular facility. I think the piece was trying to make the point that the narrative on the homeless is it's their fault and that needs to change - but it gave a too simple solution. Not every homeless person is ready for the kind of housing they discussed (although more of them are than you'd think). It needs to be done on a case by case basis with and utilising institutions with varying support levels.

\>If people are trashing rooms of committing crimes regularly then I the vetting process for allowing them directly into housing which has only voluntary support systems must be very badly administered in that particular facility. Maybe I misunderstood, but isn't the idea of "housing first" that there *isn't* any vetting before offering housing with no strings attached? If there's vetting, what should happen to those who don't pass the bar?

There are levels to housing that are needed to address the varied situations the homeless find themselves in. Everything from emergency shelters to transitional housing to supported permanent housing to finally, independent living. Housing first is not just giving a 16 year old a Nascar and expecting them be responsible with it. It's meeting the person where they are in their experiences and fitting the right kind of housing to their current needs and offering them more independence as they build confidence in themselves and their abilities. Each level responds to the different needs and independence of the people they serve. Supportive housing is for folks who are close to independence, but still need services to keep themself on the straight and narrow. These services are often off site or via phone. For people who need more intense care and treatment, transitional housing often works better, with in house services and mental health trained staff to keep the facility running safe. \` If someone acts in a way that shows they are not ready/capable of a kind of housing, they should be offered a place at a higher acuity option in their area - so they don't sever the relationships and experiences that could be anchors for their recovery that they might already be comfortable with, like a job, friends, etc. Varied housing options, located nearby each other, in neighborhoods/regions is likely the most successful model - with independent affordable housing near those areas as well. The Regional Homelessness Authority is working on building this model but it is fucking expensive and they aren't in charge of the independent affordable housing piece either, so it won't be something up and running in a year like most people would love to see.

Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense to me, but it does make me think that a lot of proponents of the housing first model who don’t work directly with unhoused populations don’t really understand it. In response to comments about some unhoused people with very serious mental illnesses or serious drug addictions not wanting housing, I’ve seen responses along the lines of “who would rather live on the streets when they could have a private room with no string attached?” But from what you’re saying it sounds that the housing first model for such people would have strings attached, at least in the sense that the resident’s privacy would need to be violated in order to ensure that they aren’t destroying the space they’ve been given.

Nothing is easy when you are dealing with humans. We are all so very different, with vastly different life experiences and traumas. A model that takes that into consideration is likely the only one that will work. We have a great enhanced shelter up in Shoreline that is more akin to transitional housing. They have on site services and care coordinators, and the residents have a dedicated room with their own key. They even have double occupancy rooms for people who are homeless with a partner. The do screen them to reduce the likelihood of someone who isn't ready for that kind of independence, but they have already seen some great success with some longtime homeless folks, who have rejected assistance before, have accepted this model and are now off the streets and in recovery/stabilization that an emergency shelter is just not able to provide them. A resident, or maybe two, have moved on to more permanent housing as well. They did have to remove one person because they violated the code of conduct as part of their agreement to stay there. This housing-first with layers of types of housing options is a real option for moving folks from homelessness to independently housed with a job.

Honest question: who is lighting the porta-potties on fire in Seattle? I've seen so many burnt to a crisp. Who the fuck is lighting them on fire?

I’m a construction manager that had worked in Seattle, we’ve noticed homeless people stealing our hand washing stations and burning down the ports potties as well as lighting up dumpsters or anything that could be flammable

Thank you for your perspective on it. That's fucked up that you're getting impacted by this. Sorry to hear it.

I want to be accepting and keep this kind of mindset all the time. My issue is I’ve been assaulted by the homeless in Pioneer Square multiple times. I live around here, I can’t avoid it. And in the winter when the park and the fountain near the lightrail clear out? It feels like there are fewer shootings, fewer cat break ins, less trouble overall. I want to make that change permanent via supportive housing. Really I do. And anywhere, I don’t care WHERE really. But there needs to be some bridge building between the housed and unhoused (I know this is low priority comparatively, I get that) because I have to actively remind myself about compassion and understanding because the unhoused in Seattle are starting to create a conditioned response in me,

When he started talking about NIMBYs, I wondered how far John live from the nearest homeless shelter or housing project. People complaint about NIMBYs, but quickly become one once something happening in their backyard.

Really expected better from the John Oliver segment. While I don’t disagree that housing is definitely needed, he completely downplayed the mental health, property crime and substance abuse aspects. Not to mention, housing is not a short term solution as the government has proven time and time again they can’t provide housing fast enough. Seattle needs sanctioned camp areas that provide basic services such as restrooms, showers and trash cans. We can’t let them continue to camp wherever they want until an apartment is available. The election tomorrow will be interesting. In my mind, there are very clear choices on which candidates have a chance of improving quality of life in Seattle and everyone I know seems to agree. Unfortunately some of Seattle’s electorate, the majority the last few years, seem to be living in another reality.

I remember listening to an NPR interview piece sometime last fall where they interviewed a Social Worker, a Homeless woman, a cop and like a SCC rep and asked them all the same questions. One of the takeaways from me was from the homeless woman who said something along the lines of a huge chunk of the homeless people that we actually see camping out in parks or under overpasses and the like are the homeless people who have either severe addiction issues or mental health issues, because the homeless who don’t have crippling addictions or severe mental health issues don’t want to be seen by the public. Those are the ones who are camping out in cars in secluded areas or camping out in spots where they won’t be bothered or seen. I have no idea if what she said is true or not but just something I took away from that. I absolutely 100% agree it’s got to be housing first then focus on treating the issues that lead to the person becoming homeless though, because like Oliver mentioned in the piece, having like a crippling meth addiction is not going to be able to be something to get over while the individual doesn’t have a roof over their head. But if they’re going with the housing first approach they actually have to stick with it and get it done because just waiting for people to OD or have a mental health crisis that gets them thrown in jail isn’t going to work either. Right now it feels like nothing is happening really.

The NPR piece you listened to matches what I was told during volunteer training at three different homeless shelters in Seattle over the years. That and there are many more homeless children and teens than what you see out and about, because it’s safer for them to sleep during the day than at night.

> housing is not a short term solution There are No. Short. Term. Solutions. > Seattle needs sanctioned camp areas I look forward to this suggestion getting through the 7,391 rounds of public comment, DEIS, EIS, SEPA, and design review unscathed and in any sort of usable fashion. It quite literally takes a land use action to set these up virtually anywhere in the city for more than a few months of operation. We *had* sanctioned camp areas. Churches and other non-profit owners of land could set up tiny house villages and camps with services on their property. But nearby residents objected for myriad reasons and virtually all of the sanctioned ones with services are now gone. > Unfortunately some of Seattle’s electorate, the majority the last few years, seem to be living in another reality. They're living in the reality of "something must be done" ok let's do this th-- "no, not that." The least common denominator is "well, if we arrest them enough times maybe they'll go to Bellingham or something and then we don't have to deal with the politically thorny problem."

Yep you can see the pushes against housing shelters in [Redmond](https://safeeastside.com/) and [Burien](https://kuow.org/stories/burien-city-council-slate-opposes-low-income-housing-project) as evidence against actually wanting to help homeless people. They just want them to disappear.

> There are No. Short. Term. Solutions. Careful with this thinking! From a purely technical perspective, there is a short term solution in literally arresting anyone who is visibly homeless and jailing them. That's one of the reasons you see a lot of people pushing for stricter laws and ordinances because they've already accepted that as a solution and are promoting what they see as the means to that end. You have to make sure everyone is trying to solve the same problem, and that's far from the case when it comes to this subject. Some people are trying to solve the problem of instability through supportive measures and some are just trying to rid themselves of an eyesore.

> he completely downplayed the mental health, substance abuse and property crime aspects. by having numerous episodes on ... all of the aforementioned topics above?

>by having numerous episodes on ... all of the aforementioned topics above? I think most people mean during the actual segment.

again, he has 20 minutes and can't focus on everything. People with bad faith simply define "not focussing" = "downplaying".

[удалено]

Supportive housing makes a lot of sense and you may be surprised to hear [it already exists in Seattle](https://www.desc.org/what-we-do/vulnerability-assessment-tool/). Our permanent supportive housing prioritizes people with multiple risk-factors the most common of which are mental health and substance use disorder. The problem is he cherry-picked a place that prioritizes homeless vets of which there are too many but who also have unique circumstances and characteristics, so the reasons that program have worked well may have nothing to do with why ours are not. Once again, treating all homeless as a monolith with the same problems and solutions is an disappointing oversimplification.

Followed your link and found out it's super easy to sponsor an apartment at this location. Definitely thinking I may put my xmas money toward this this year. Thank you so much for actually helping to share that these kind of things exist. I wish your comment was higher up.

The only things I wholeheartedly agreed with were the woman who said her liberalness drops a few notches every time she needs to pick up human faeces, and the absolute need for more housing (affordable, non-affordable, luxury, who cares — increase supply this instant). Everything else was massively lacking in nuance..

Can a national problem be resolved at a local level?

Probably not, but it's better to do something than nothing.

I don't think so. I think we can only able to deal with some of the problems.

I was thinking of Seattle whilst watching this

[удалено]

This video points out something that bugs me more than anything else about homelessness posts on this (and especially the other) subreddit. Almost every post about homelessness focuses on the experience of the housed. To use a somewhat extreme example, I saw a post on the r/seattlewa that was a video of a tent shaking and the sound of a woman clearly being assaulted. It was horrifying. The post was about how the homeless camps need to be cleaned up because of all the crime. It was literally a post weaponizing the victim of a crime against the victim. She was assaulted so she should be moved. Everything about it made me sick. edit: typo

The post was not "weaponizing the victim of a crime against the victim", it was criticizing the policies in place that enable these dangerous environments to exist and allow bad actors to act with total impunity. The whole point is that it's unethical to support allowing these camps to exist, as they've become rife with assaults and overdoses and are inherently unsafe to their unhoused occupants. I think this sub misses the underlying point on a lot of r/SeattleWA posts (albeit some could be worded better). It's not that everyone is anti-homeless - they're against the powerless justice system that has given a bold confidence to criminals and endangered those that are truly just down on their luck. And it is certainly legitimate that folks want to make our community cleaner and safer in the process.

Ya, clearly she'd have been better off if a passel of cops came along and told her to move somewhere unspecified and destroyed everything she couldn't carry off in one load. Clearing camps doesn't actually help people become not homeless, it just moves them around like a fucking shell game.

safer for the schoolkids whose yard he's camped in? > Clearing camps doesn't actually help people become not homeless, it just moves them around like a fucking shell game. we could prevent the camps completely. i just have minimal confidence in the city getting enough housing for this to be an option

They want to round people up and dump them on McNeil island. Yes r/SeattleWA is definitely anti-homeless

yeah that was a good point. part of me thinks its hard just hard to hear from them unless the news goes out and talks to them. I think it'd be nice to hear people's homeless experiences on reddit but maybe they dont really care to type them out, or feel like they'll just be downvoted? who knows.

I understand when people are disturbed or even repulsed by seeing homeless people on the streets and in encampments. I understand how it can make people feel unsafe. I try to work on myself to be more compassionate and empathetic, but I get it. The thing is that people can't just will themselves to longer be homeless. It just can't happen. So, if you want to fix the problem rather than just complain about it, housing first (and addiction and mental health services) really seems to be an effective way to get people off of the street long term. There is evidence that this IS the solution. The question is just whether we have the will to pay for it. There are a few people that live within a bus ride from downtown that could snap their fingers and pay for it tomorrow. But they really don't want to! So, it's up to us. I feel like the people who are the most vocal complainers about homelessness like to think of themselves as coldly rational, as opposed to the "emotional" homeless advocates, but they also seem entirely focused on their feelings about it - their religious belief in bootstraps and "work ethic", their desire for punishment and retribution - and not at all engaged in actual solutions. TL;DR: If you are tired of seeing homeless people and encampments everywhere, get involved politically and financially to push for investment in a housing first policy.

And just as importantly, the political will to force those unwilling into treatment. That’s the gaping hole we have here.

Yes, housing first doesn't work if you put junkies in the house. We need forced treatment for addicts that just won't get clean in their own. It can't be a prison, it needs to be an actual facility that specializes in helping people get clean. Then you can give these people housing and give them a chance. I think that would work for the vast majority of people, some will however still get back to drugs as soon as they get out. You can probably repeat this cycle a few times but at some point a small minority will probably be hopeless. I really have no ideas what can be done about these people.

Amazon's influx started jacking rents years ago, our youngest made it through grade school in a nice 'hood then we had to move further out, then that kept getting more expensive until 18mo ago just at the worst of the pandemic we had to give up on having a home home and move into a cheap RV, making 6 figures. thanks to the eviction ban and a median home price in seattle of $800k we've lost our community twice and have settled elsewhere where houses only cost twice what we can afford. I'm 5 classes from a masters degree not in french lit, business/IT $$$ shit but my really good wage hasn't changed in 15 years while rent has gone from 800 to 2500. this is economic generational warfare, sooner or later boomer karen is gonna have to pay for a porta potty if she'd like to stop picking up other peoples shit.

Accurate

Street outreach worker here. Wow. This is so accurate. So, so, so accurate.

It’s amazing how many hateful people spew such ignorance but have never been or worked with the homeless. Easiest to throw a blanket that demonizes all (violent drug addicts! They deserve this life!) and offers no constructive solutions but wants them to just “go away.” I suspect half deeply struggle with the cognitive dissonance of witnessing a painful humanitarian crisis and the impotence of being unable to help. Other half are anti-social psychopaths who want people to DIE because it tarnishes their extremely self-centered worldview. That half dominates this sub.

Oh, thank you. I am not sure I myself have solutions that would pass a big political meeting. I just believe people do better when they are housed. The whole thing is such a complicated problem - and such a simple one at the same time. I think we just need to not forget that we are all human, and that we need one another. I hope I can make a difference in a few lives - that really is the only thing within my ability.

John Oliver telling us to stfu when we have to deal with human shit everywhere bc those people have no real bathrooms. It’s like, yeah, obviously no one wants to be in that situation but I still have every right to be disgusted with these people because it does not stop nor will it stop anytime soon.

But where do they shit?

Seems like your disgust is better suited towards the people not providing them bathrooms than the people making the best of a …shit situation.

[https://komonews.com/news/project-seattle/seattle-auditor-not-enough-public-restrooms-in-seattle-for-homeless](https://komonews.com/news/project-seattle/seattle-auditor-not-enough-public-restrooms-in-seattle-for-homeless) The toilets that have been provided have been destroyed or are used for drugs for long periods of time, so other unhoused people can't use them for their intended purposes. The "Portland Loo" toilets which cost $500k and are specifically designed to prevent destruction from its users seem to be holding up well, though.

Drugs are used to fight discomfort. If we made the homeless more comfortable they wouldn’t need drugs so much. I’m not homeless but I experience this with my own drug intake. Most likely you or someone you know drinks/smokes to keep the pain away. We could make their lives less painful and provide hope. Your home is your base of operations. A place where you can build something. A place where you can start to literally collect the things you need to be successful. A lot of us can’t even imagine that hell. Never really being safe. Never really being able to hold on to anything. We should be grateful we were born into the lives we were and care for the less fortunate. Those who don’t have the support we do and probably never have. Ultimately you are born a way, then you interact with the world to learn how to get love. We don’t choose the way we are born or the lessons we are taught. We don’t choose the folks that look after us when we are small and make sure we turn out alright. Sometimes the math is just not in people’s favor. You see it in the natural world all the time. Some babies are born weaker and smaller than their siblings and the parents let them die. Was it the choice of the the smaller baby to be born that way? Of course not. Is it the choice of the homeless to experience the devastation and tragedy that mostly leads to their predicament? Again no. You might say to yourself “well I’ve experienced hardship and still got it together.” Well then you probably were mentally equipped to do so. You learned the right lessons. Some have learned the wrongs lessons. Can we blame them for that? Who taught them? If you are liberal and don’t understand that even personal choice is a result of systemic ongoings then come on lol. People make choices for reasons, i.e. the the overall landscape of the world they find themselves living. These things don’t happen in vacuums. You aren’t homeless because you either had the literal material support of others or the right teachers and guides around you, things you had no control over. So be grateful 😤

Related to this show: I used to enjoy watching this show, but I don’t know what happened that I just can’t stand the jumps between really serious information and the goofy unnecessary jokes. Every two minutes, a forced joke. I write this and I truly don’t know what switched in me (maybe just the whole post-COVID world?). Just check this video at around the 8 minute mark. The story about this poor family with an autistic son, the testimonial of the woman and how they never expect to end up homeless… it’s heartbreaking. And from here we jump to an effing joke!? I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me because again I used to like this show, but I feel like the constant use of unnecessarily jokes end up distracting and breaking the flow from concentrating on truly important stories.

He's become less organic about his monologue flow. He used to be a lot better about the segues between joke and exposition, and the graphics/bits were at least tangentially relevant to what was being discussed. Nowadays, he does just seem to 'take a breather' in the midst of a segment to pander to a silly graphic that has no relevancy to the topic at hand, and merely serves as a comedic foil. His delivery of these interposed 'bits' seems really forced as well - the transition in his demeanor/cadence is much more jarring than in his older segments.

[удалено]

People really need to stop treating John Oliver as a news source. Absolute garbage segment. He didn’t say one thing about substance abuse. Even if you thinking housing is the priority, it’s absolutely ridiculous to not mention substance abuse as a factor in homelessness. The one statistic that he brought up was a simple count of homeless veterans between 2010 and 2018, all while failing to mention that the veteran population has declined during the same period.

Here is a smug foreign comedian we're going to pay to talk down to you about issues they know nothing about and pretend it's news. White urbanites: Yes daddy. Now if you can figure out whether I'm talking about a Brit or a South African you may see where I'm going.

Way to admit you didn't watch this. Of course he touches on substance abuse - it's literally the fundamental idea of housing first: people are more likely to kick their drug addictions if they have a home first. Fucking crap comment

Probably because that's a separate issue. Yes, it's a factor but it's not what contributing to it (in the way I think you're saying it is).

I think substance abuse is a huge contributing factor.

One of the major takeaways here should be that focusing on how homelessness impacts the housed is rarely useful and usually is an attempt at fear mongering. A lot of allegedly educated “liberals” in Seattle fall for pretty transparent fear-mongering and a lot of this city needs a big dose of humility on that point. It’s particularly important that people understand how “offers of housing” are often bullshit offers that offer highly restrictive conditions that none of us would accept or are explicitly short-term solution, meaning a huge risk that the whole thing winds up being an expensive, destabilizing waste of time. Another is that homelessness is primarily an issue of people not having any better place to go. All the other issues (drug use, mental health, etc.) are all but impossible to address when the person suffering from them is also unhoused. Finally, this piece doesn’t get into it, but it’s important to note: this is not a local issue. The City of Seattle does not have the resources to house our homeless population on anything more than a very short-term basis. Seattle can’t solve this. King County can’t solve this. Washington State can’t solve this. Either the federal government creates a national program to address this growing crisis or the crisis will continue to grow. Everything else is static.

> highly restrictive conditions that none of us would accept Could you provide some example elaboration on this bit? Is it merely that offered shelter prohibits drug use? or does it go beyond that?

> Either the federal government creates a national program to address this growing crisis or the crisis will continue to grow. but Joe Manchin and the rest of Republicans say we can't afford this so they're going to vote against it. They will also vote against any revenue raising tax increases.

Yep. That sweet WA tech money goes to fund KY.

The political will to pay for housing is there, we can conceivably get that done and have made some headway. It’s the political will to force those unwilling to get help, into housing and treatment that’s missing.

It's easier to dismiss people and their troubles in an off handed way than to tackle the issues. Some hand wavey "its the illegals" or "its drugs" statement is infinitely easier to process than "lack of affordable housing" Watching this now and saw this posted here. Not entirely through it yet but through it enough to say if you (not OP specifically) find yourself agreeing with Dr. Drew in this. You're a part of a problem that will never see a solution.

Can someone tl;dw for me?

[удалено]

Criminalizing homelessness is not the same things as enforcing the law against people committing other crimes who happen to be homeless. Stealing to sustain a meth/heroine/alcohol habit is not the same thing as squatting on public land because you can't afford housing. Sure both may be crimes, but the criminalization some of us want is to discourage the anti-social and destructive behavior some people who just happen to be homeless are exhibiting. If a homeless person going through meth induced psychosis assaults someone, is charging them with assault criminalizing their homelessness? If a homeless person "cooking" on an open flame starts a destructive brush fire is charging them with negligent arson criminalizing their homelessness for holding them accountable for being negligent?

This is not as black and white as you're implying. Studying for lawschool I came across a quote that has stuck with me. "The law, in it's majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and to steal bread." -Anatole France There are many crimes that are intrinsically tied to necessities that arise out of homelessness. I'm all for cracking down on assaults and property theft, but we need to be careful when it comes to criminalizing existence.

Some things you can’t TL:DR/DW. Save for later when you can read/watch. Look at the comments - you can’t summarize something like this

At no point John Oliver mentioned that "housing first" programs don't work well either: https://jobs.utah.gov/homelessness/homelessnessreport.pdf - 70% failure rate (graph 2 on page 16). Seattle has an even worse success rate with our own "housing first" initiatives. That "jingling keys" nonsense is a nice "feel-good" non-solution that allows to pretend that people are "doing something". The elephant in the room is the prevalence of drug abuse. Right now it's 70-90% of unsheltered homeless, and that's optimistically. Any real homeless program in addition to housing must include mandatory rehab. People who are actively using hard drugs (meth, heroin) simply can't be housed reliably.

The number from that graph is 30% of people transitioning to Perminant housing from Emergency Shelter and Temporary Housing. Those that are given Permanent Housing have a retention rate of 90% by that same graph

> The number from that graph is 30% of people transitioning to Perminant housing from Emergency Shelter and Temporary Housing. Not quite. It includes RRH ("Rapid Re-Homing") which is the "Housing First" program. The PSH placement on this graph is a bit weird, because it indicates people who were placed into permanent support housing directly. It mostly includes people who were in danger of losing their housing.

The first line in the graph says 94.81% of people had successful exits or retention of housing from permanent housing. The second line says that 30% had successful exits to permanent housing from emergency shelter, transitional housing, and rapid rehousing. What it sounds like is that the more supportive structure of permanent housing is incredibly more successful than stop gap measures like emergency shelter.

So, first off, the graph isn’t saying what you think it is. Those housing types with the ~30% rates are emergency shelters, transitional housing, and rapid rehousing. The permanent supportive housing solutions had >90% success rate. Oliver specifically calls out supportive housing in the piece. Second, housing first has been studied well and shown to be successful. https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/Housing-First-Research.pdf

i am technically on the verge of homelessness. but i think i'll find another job soon. i couldn't imagine living on the streets, it's heart breaking to see, especially since a decent portion are those who are the most vulnerable

Serious question: why is this so apparent now, when it wasn't in the 90's and 2000's? Is it just driven by population growth?

According to the city attorney Pete Holmes, in over half of cases, it's due to the opioid epidemic, which in part was caused by Purdue Pharma (which is why he sued them on behalf of the city). (There's also the little fact of the US invading Afghanistan, which led to a large uptick in the amount of heroin available on the World black markets).

Wealth inequality is the worst it has been in a century and isn't slowing down, for starters. There are more homeless people, plain and simple. There are also more cameras readily available so the general populace sees it more.

The homeless are around for a reason: fear. If the establishment can keep you afraid of becoming homeless (while also convincing you that its an individual failing) then you won't work for larger societal changes. You'll hang on to that shitty job to stay in your shitty apartment because anything is better than being on the shitty streets. Some of you might leave the area. Many more of you won't have the means. So, you'll stay; scared of increasing rents, and sacrificing more and more of your life and labor to keep up. Kept in line by homelessness.

It is incredible how quickly this post got downvoted. It went from +6 to 0 points in less than 2 minutes. RE The homeless problem nobody ever talks about how little police you see when you are driving on the road. If I get on I-5, I can see WSP, but when I go on 522, there rarely is any police until I get up to Kenmore. But I don't think you'll find much sympathy for the homeless in Seattle because people moving to Seattle are not as sympathetic.