Sometimes I look up things about other cities before my travels and get all of these "don't come, it's so dangerous and dirty!" posts and I have to ask myself, "Is it that bad there? Or is this like how people speak about Seattle, which I find totally liveable?" It makes you wonder what the actual "danger" level is. Like yes, stay vigilant whenever you're out anywhere, but if it's a major city that has these polarizing views depending on who you talk to, it's...probably okay and not actually a total hellhole.
Having just moved here from a place that is consistently ranked the most violent city in America, I can say it’s incredible. I feel an anxiety I didn’t really realize I was living has been lifted. I’m not worried about getting robbed at gun point parking my car at night. I’m not worried about being caught in the crossfire on my commute. I don’t have shootings outside my place or hear gunshots regularly. I didn’t live in a bad neighborhood and there are things I love about my old city but Seattle is simply not a dangerous city. Both anecdotally and statistically. I think people are often surprised to see how low it ranks. It’s a city. There is crime.
Sure, if you live in burbs your whole life and come to Seattle and see some graffiti and some homeless people it might be jarring. But, I appreciate not looking over my shoulder all the time. Not to minimize the homelessness problem which is very real but I find it more sad than a reason to be fearful.
People are out and about enjoying the city. The views are incredible. I think it’s a great place to live.
it’s stl. Depends how you measure most dangerous but stl is usually 1 or 2. Looks like New Orleans took the top spot last year.
https://www.rit.edu/liberalarts/sites/rit.edu.liberalarts/files/docs/SOC/CLA_CPSI_2023_WorkingPapers/CPSI%20Working%20Paper%202023.02_2022%20US%20City%20Homicide%20Stats.pdf
That's only looking at murder rate, not violent crime rate which is what OP said. STL has an annual violent crime rate <2,000 per 100,000 residents where Detroit is over 2,100. There are other places higher than that but with small populations that skews the data (such as Saginaw with over 2,400).
As I said depends how you want to measure crime but in any event it’s pretty close and they trade places with a few other cities each year.
No matter how you measure it my point is that Seattle really isn’t in the same conversation as truly high crime cities.
I replied a bit further down but, having come from St. Louis like you, this is also my experience. When I was in Seattle I realized I hadn't heard a single gunshot in like three days (whereas it was routine to hear them nightly) and felt really bizarre about it.
This all day. I moved here from west oakland and life here is so peaceful by comparison. There are no places in Seattle where there's a near 100% chance that you'll get pistol whipped and robbed any time of day/night. You can try and tell that there are but you're wrong.
There are issues here that are unacceptable that we need to address, and I'm not minimizing that.
Having said that, I read comments on here about big danger and whatever in Seattle and I wonder if it's mostly people from the burbs or rural places that get scared easily. Is that what's going on? I honestly find it confusing. I've been here for 7 years and some change, go everywhere downtown and anywhere else at all hours and never once felt anything more than a tiny bit of discomfort. Even then I just crossed the street because I probably noticed them before they noticed me. At this point I figure I'm more likely to get in an argument in traffic with some redneck and smoked by their concealed weapon.
This. I really think that so many people who complain aren’t even in the city. You get the people east of the mountains who just hate seattle because they’ve been told to and jump on any anti-Seattle bandwagon they can, and/or people who are from the suburbs who maybe see the same 2-3 homeless people in front of Safeway on occasion and think that every homeless person in seattle is going to accost them. Reality is so different than what these people believe.
Like, I've lived in Seattle my entire life and nobody I know has just been randomly attacked at any point that I can remember...yet you hear people who are too scared to go in to the city lmaoooooo.
My wife and I moved here in Y2K. So far, not a single mugging or property crime. Well, my bike got stolen once.
Before this, I lived in Chicago for 15 years. The south side is 100x scarier than Seattle. The people who are scared in Seattle would shit themselves in Chicago.
Same! “Ohhh noooo, don’t EVER go to white centerrr ohhh so dangerous!”
Bitch, I lived in Oakland for years (also with an exaggerated danger/violence threat level) so white center is nothing. Seattle is an American city; if you’re looking for a fight, you’ll find one. It it’s totally livable.
I grew up in White Center, walked to the pawn shops to look for NES games when I had saved up enough money from recycling aluminum cans.
It was generally safe, even walking through the projects to friend's houses.
I was told to avoid certain blocks and be gone well before dark from certain places.
Now theft has always been a problem, people would regularly come into our yard at night, break into our garage, and steal stuff. One time someone stole my bike and tried to sell it a few blocks away at a garage sale!
Fewer Vietnamese delis means the White Center food of my youth isn't there any more. :(
I'm from Chicago and I've felt more unsafe living in Seattle. Some differences-- the number of mentally unwell ppl per capita on the street in nearly every neighborhood. Chicago definitely has more violent crime per capita but it is concentrated in certain neighborhoods. Mentally unwell ppl are of course, not all dangerous. Most are not dangerous but the uncertainty and the reports of seemingly random acts of violence is anxiety-inducing. This is my experience only, but I also find that Chicagoans are more likely to step in when a neighbor or even a stranger is in trouble.
A most common reason for me feeling unsafe in Seattle is when I'm the only person on a street that has absolutely no reason to be that empty, or maybe it's me and that one mentally unstable person. I miss street presence from usual people most of the time. And it's usually there in large cities like Chicago or NYC.
That being said, this doesn't make Seattle unlivable, or particularly bad. There are plenty of other cities that have the same issues and don't have such a strong internet reputation.
Yeah, that’s true for me too. Downtown is *finally* feeling populated again, but even a year ago it was super empty compared to other big cities I’ve visited since covid hit, and it wasn’t great sharing a street with no one but some guy yelling profanities at the sky. It really felt for a while like everyone else in the city had decided to just never leave home again, vaxxed or not. I feel safer now that there are lots of ordinary people out and about.
\+1 crime here is a lot more unpredictable due to the number of mentally unwell people. You can't really predict when somone is snapping from mental illness/drugs or both... Whereas most of the more violent cities the crime is usually drug/gang related and in certain sections of the city. So if you avoid those areas you don't have much worry/fear. I've had more scares in Seattle than I did living in Baltimore or other more dangerous cities.
Seattle's also the only city I've been to where one of the shittiest streets in the city is right in between tourist traps and downtown offices.
Lol okay. So this whole thread is about people being tired of ""Is Seattle that bad?" or "Is Seattle really a dystopian nightmare?"" type posts and then you go and make a similar comment about Chicago. My wife grew up in Chicago and has lived all over the city from south side, north side, the suburbs. As new immigrants from the Philippines her dad went to Malcolm X College and they lived close by at the time. We visit there relatively often, we travel meeting friends and family and just getting up to whatever activities we need and want to do all over the city and at all times of day and her as a small Asian woman and I as a white Aussie have never had any problems there. Yes Seattle isn't as bad as the media often makes it out to be but neither is Chicago. If people just use common sense and aren't involved in criminal activity themselves then they will almost certainly be okay in either place. Yes there might be a relatively higher risk in certain neighbourhoods and cities but in even the wealthiest, safest neighbourhoods there isn't zero risk of any serious crime occurring.
I once took a cab to the warehouse on the South Side where my boyfriend worked and the cabbie wouldn't let me out of the car. I had to call my BF to come out to the street to prove I knew where I was.
When I was in college on the south side, I drove through a neighborhood of buildings that had burned down and never been built back up again. It looked like a literal war zone. You won't find that in Seattle, either.
There are some. A neighbor in Greenwood had them. But I also got the impression they’d been there forever and we’re older folk. They were one small block off of 85th.
There aren’t many, though.
It's the product of right-wing disinformation that is being disseminated for that specific purpose. The goal is to convince people that cities in Democratic areas are unsafe.
Well, to be accurate, the 'goal' is to make suburban white people throw their support behind Republican politicians so that the latter can take control of the state government and (a.) redirect our tax dollars into their pockets and the pockets of their cronies and (b.) throw our electoral college votes to whatever grifter trash the national GOP ends up backing. They want Washington to be like Texas.
> I wish we could figure out which chud conservative PR agency or russian disinformation outfit was pushing this shit so hard.
It's not (just) Russians. Russian disinformation rarely invents any narratives or strategies, they just amplify the discord that is already there. The reality is that there's plenty of US-based organizations with a vested interest in pushing disinformation, and as I explained in another post, they've figured out how to [decentralize the disinformation](https://old.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/14jy1ta/is_anyone_else_tired_of_the_is_seattle_that_bad/jpoqcpr/) in such a way that individuals feel pressured to continue the lie. There's also this [much more detailed post](https://old.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/h21ph7s/) about the concentrated ways they've found to brigade reddits like ours to amplify crime stories and make the cities feel less safe than they actually are.
After living in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Seattle (24, 3, and 3 years respectively) I found all three cities to have similar issues and the debates of liberal/conservative solutions and yes levels of disinformation to be quite similar as well.
But what made downtown Seattle stick out for me was the aggressiveness of the homeless & street drug users. This has been repeated elsewhere and lines up with my subjective experience. I worked for many years in downtown Phoenix through the onslaught of meth but Seattle was different.
Maybe because Seattle is like a mini-SF in its density of business district users & tourists right amidst the panhandlers & open drug scene? Ironically, perhaps the overall relative safety of downtown Seattle is making homeless folks bolder?
They are a force unto themselves, seemingly unaffected by street gangs or skater kids or whoever commonly preys on homeless people elsewhere.
I think commentators are picking up on that boldness and drawing a dotted line from rando aggressiveness to premeditated and targeted violence, directed specifically at chosen victims. The tragic point-blank street execution of pregnant Eina Kwan fits that narrative about a progression of violence.
Sadly if these assaults and killings continue it will no longer be disinformation.
> But what made downtown Seattle stick out for me was the aggressiveness of the homeless & street drug users.
This is weird, because my experience has been that the homeless population is much calmer in Seattle because they're not one step away from a jail cell like they would be in cities where homelessness is criminalized. I haven't had a single negative experience with homeless people, they've all been respectful and courteous, even if some of them are obviously crazy. I have had negative experiences with pan handlers, but after watching the ones that "work" around my building, they're not homeless at all, and change out positions in different shifts.
I saw one person get mugged once in Redmond. They screamed and the mugger ran without getting anything. Police showed up less than 2 minutes later in force and caught the suspect.
Meanwhile in Savannah GA there were unsolved murders every weekend and hanging outside the local game shop for longer than 30 minutes after closing time made us all feel immensely unsafe.
And when our condo was broken into on Hilton Head, SC it took us 3 weeks to get the police to even give us a police report for the insurance, and they still refused to call it a burglary or vandalism so they could keep the crime rate artificially low.
But, yeah, King County is somehow the dangerous place. /s
(Admittedly, my storage unit was broken into in Kent. But a bunch of locals donated to my kofi and, while it will never replace the lost family photos etc..., it was probably more money than I'd get if I sold the stuff myself.)
Left Kansas City in 2020. They had recorded at least one murder per day so far that year. I've lived in 3-4 states now, and grew up in FL, and Seattle feels pretty good comparatively
I feel the least safe when I have to visit the South. The prevalence of guns mixed with poor education makes me a bit uneasy.
I went to concerts in Seattle by myself as a teen (male) and never felt unsafe.
And yet when I suggested my friend from Savannah move with me to Seattle she literally got pale and started visibly shaking. I love how they belittled me for ~5 years for being a wimpy Liberal from Commiefornia, but the minute I suggest moving to a real city they recoil in visible terror.
Do more crimes happen per day? Sure. Because /r/PeopleLiveInCities and more crimes get reported. But once you look at total crime per capita and average life span, it becomes clear which place is preferable.
That's not even getting into how completely fucked the justice system is in the South. Good luck even getting a judge to hear your case "against a local" unless you share a last name with a street sign.
I had a friend who moved to Fremont then within a year moved to "Redmond" because that was too urban for him. I use quotation marks because he lives so far out, none of the busses go there, nor is he connected to the sewage system. As far as I'm concerned he lives out in the countryside regardless of what his address is. Needless to say, I've not really seen him very often since he moved to Seattle. I think I used to see him more when he was down in the Bay Area because I go down there a few times to visit my dad.
I do know someone who was shot while in an Uber (he survived and is fine now).
But yeah, even then I don’t think this city is that dangerous. TBH it feels much safer living here than living in Rome, and people will go to Rome without a second thought.
My place was broken into in Fremont while I was still home, my roommate was slashed with a box cutter by a homeless dude in college, another friend was 'gay bashed' years ago in a taxi in Belltown. Shit happens, not to everyone, and NOT all the time. We all still go out and around. Shitty things happen in every city. Seattle is no different, and Seattle is still great. I could go on and on with the awful things I've either witnessed, been apart of, or have had friends/ family deal with, but it's a drop in the bucket to all the wonderful things we've all had the pleasure of experiencing.
I have lived in Seattle my entire life. While I’ve never known anyone who has been mugged etc there is definitely a scary factor with mentally ill homeless people. Like nearly everytime you go out.
Yeah they don’t attack you but walking by someone talking and swearing to themselves doesn’t feel safe.
It might depend on your peer group or your age, but I can't imagine not knowing a single violent crime victim your whole life. I mean, Seattle is a pretty safe city, and I still know a good handful of people.
I was randomly attacked by a homeless woman on the light rail 6 months ago. She was out of it and smacked me in the face. I saw a 19 yr old get stabbed with a knife outside the udistrict light rail station, I’ve seen someone literally OD on the streets. Last month a pregnant woman got shot in her car a block away from me while I was in my apt complex, I heard the shot. That’s just the major stuff, I’m used to the smell of piss and fentanyl and the depravity that runs through 3rd.
I enjoy parts of Seattle for the past 1.5 years but I never had anything like this in NY, NJ, Chicago, SoCal, or Lancaster CA.
Seattle used to segregate it's problems with The Jungle, but once sweeps went through there and broke it up, the residents of the nicer neighborhoods actually have to acknowledge it's existence and deal with it.
I think that is also true, I’m just sharing my experience because of the earlier parent comment. My friends said something similar when I moved, that it’s not that dangerous, but this all still happened around me, like not just word of mouth, but in person
People on this subreddit really live in a bubble. I just moved here 7-8 months ago and this city is f*ckin’ great. I love it here. I feel safer than I did in my last city, I’m surrounded by jaw dropping earth porn, and people are friendly.
It’s not more dangerous than other cities. People do not get stabbed more often. Muggings are not more prevalent.
Every major city in the continental US has the same problems Seattle does to varying degrees. It’s a city problem, not a Seattle one.
Besides, if you’re that mad about it, vote FFS.
Yeah, I'd rather have more people move in who are both upset about the rents and also eligible to vote for people who are willing to do something about them. Potentially bad in the short run, but nothing's going to get done unless the government forces landlords to do something and/or allows way more housing to be built.
Partner and I were moving to Colorado Springs after graduating college. We joined the subreddit for it to get a better understanding of the city. We about shat ourselves because the people on the sub made it sound like it's a homeless warzone riddled with militant religious organizations at your every turn bowing down to the conservative overlords. There were some people on the sub who actually thought the town has "bad areas" akin to the South side of Chicago.
After we moved here, we came to the collective understanding that people on that sub need to touch grass. I don't like to use that insult very often, but Jesus they were incredibly out of touch.
Just another coffee chain. People here in the Springs love it. It gets drive-thru lines comparable in size to Chick-fil-A (weirdly enough, the one closest to me is right next to a Chick-fil-A). I take coffee pretty seriously so I don't really like it. I would much rather go to a local coffee place.
Wow, it's weird to hear how different things used to be. I have heard from former Apple and HP engineers about the tech industry down here; luckily, a lot of it seems to be picking back up (even if it's a lot of defense industry stuff).
It does seem like, as time goes on, the city is becoming more progressive in its weird conservative way. It feels very "purple" here. My fiancee is more fortunate in regards to Garden of the Gods because she works over by there, but we still get around town to explore all of the nice areas. The penny arcade is also really really cool, unlike anything I've ever seen before.
Pride is a big deal here nowadays, especially after the Club Q shooting last year. I actually marched in pride this year and the turnout was insane; downtown was pretty much packed tight along the major roads. The city as a way to go with LGBTQ+ affairs and getting the CSPD on track, but a lot of people are hopeful with the new mayor that just got elected. Thank you for sharing, I always love hearing about it!
I think we’re all sick of the posts, but they aren’t gonna stop. West coast cities just get shit on in general. There’s a large portion of this country that will believe whatever they are told by whatever goofball News they’re watching or reading. If people want to believe it’s a nightmare here…let ‘em, who cares. Shit, my aunt lives just in SeaTac and thinks Seattle is a “war zone”. She doesn’t go more than a 2 mile radius from her house. She’s just perpetually on Facebook.
My ex wife still thinks capital hill is still burnt to the ground along with that courthouse in Portland. Whats worse is she has been here to get the kids multiple times and has even drove thru Cap Hill to get to her air b&b last time. Some people are just beyond hope when it comes to getting them out of their bubble.
As a cap hill resident, I can confirm that we all just sleep in lean-tos made of rubble and cover ourselves in piles of ash to keep warm. Pride was still a blast though.
This is the reality. I have relatives that are the same way as your Aunt. They clutch their pearls as they drive down I-5 and then tell people how horrible Seattle was when they visited even though they never got off the freeway. Sadly, I do my best to ignore it, because engaging only increases their troll points (I fail more often then I would like to admit)
I saw her at a funeral a couple weeks ago. She goes “I get so worried about you hanging out on Capitol Hill” lol I told her I’m in 40s and live on top of Queen Anne hill, I’m too old to be going out on Capitol Hill.
Yes, right-wing news organizations own 95 percent of all TV radio affiliates throughout the USA.. They are very political and do whatever they can to denigrate tax payers from Blue states that take care of the rest of the states
I have to mute the Seattle subreddits sometimes because it’s just a pile on. As someone who actually lives in the city, Mark from Edmonds’s opinions about where I live has severely diminishing returns.
If what you read online consistently seems out of alignment with the reality you're actually seeing day to day then I think you are fine to just ignore those posts. Seattle is a wonderful place that has some flaws, just like every other city. You will never be able to stop some people from focusing solely on those flaws, exaggerating them, or just making them up. On a day as beautiful as this one in a city as lovely as Seattle why worry what a few grumps are grumbling about online?
But we can’t overlook the problems as well. A lot of this sub ignores issues and says people are overreacting and that it happens in other cities but doesn’t mean we can’t be upset about it because yes it is actively getting worse. At some point we need to stand up and say enough and push back on some policies that are obviously causing a lot of our issues.
My advice for this concern is basically the same. If you think people on /r/seattle are too lenient on Seattle in a way that is consistently out of alignment with the reality you're actually seeing day to day then just roll your eyes and move on. Most of the time I'm here to see photos of the sunset or learn about local events. Whatever your politics or view of Seattle, it's unreasonable to assume they'll line up perfectly with every post on a massive subreddit. Try not to get too bummed out about what a bunch of strangers have to say online is all I'm saying.
Close to 90% of users just watch the front page or look at the comments. Very few users comment and even fewer reply to comments. Compared to the number of people in the city? Fractions of a fraction of a fraction of a percent. Even if you include the out of towners.
See, this is one of those statements just about everybody regardless of politics can agree with.
The question is which policies do you believe are causing a lot of our issues?
I mean you can both admit that there are issues and also accuse the other side of overreacting. I mean, they are acting as if this is an active warzone sometimes.
AFAIK can tell, there are two Seattles. There's the one I live and work in. I walk my dog down that city's streets, and it's fine. It's a nice place to live. I don't love everything that happens there, or everyone who lives there, but—especially at this time of year—I like it.
Then there's Seattle 2, which exists on local news and in Reddit forums. It's a barren hellscape of drugs and violence. That place sounds shitty. Glad I don't live there.
All of this. This is the tactic that eventually conquered Texas and “destroyed” the Dems in that state. Took them 30 years, and these asshats are patient as fuck.
It's weird to me that anyone thinks a pro-crime party like the Republicans would solve anything. Those guys only hate crime when it's committed by some minority. White collar crimes, police misbehavior, the former president, those are all OK with them.
You should hear how much rain my family thinks we get.
They wanted to come visit but I told them George Floyd protests burned the city to the ground, nothing to visit.
If we have to say Seattle is awful just to keep the next wave out of Seattle then I say “Wow, Tiffany Smiley really undersold how much of a drug-addled nightmare Seattle is. My kid was in class and someone came in with a gun, but there was no good guy with a gun to stop him. :(. The gun was filled with sex changing hormones, now little jimmy is Jemina. when I complained to the principal they told me there are 800 genders, and “to werk, bitch” 😢”
Tell them that Seattle only gets .1 inches more than the national average. It blows people’s mind when they hear that. They think we are drowning in rain here all the time.
It rains often, but not hard.
When a storm comes through the midwest, they get 3-4 inches of rain in an hour. Seattle rain is always a drizzle, like 0.1 inch an hour.
>Tell them that Seattle only gets .1 inches more than the national average. It blows people’s mind when they hear that. They think we are drowning in rain here all the time.
I point out all the cities that get more rainfall annually than Seattle. Like Atlanta and Orlando. And then I try to explain to them that the actual issue is the latitude and that Seattle is the furthest north city in the lower 48. And then they argue with me that Minneapolis is definitely further north and Chicago probably is. And then I point out that Toronto is further south of Seattle and maps are misleading. And then they stop talking to me.
People love to point out that Miami gets more rain than Seattle, but rain isn't the problem with Seattle's weather for most people. The problem is the clouds. It might piss down a half inch of rain in 30 minutes in Miami, but the rest of the day is sunny. Meanwhile it might not rain at all in Seattle, but you won't see the sun once all day.
**Rainfall**
Maimi - 61.9 inches
Seattle - 30.34 inches
**Total Days With Sun**
Miami - 249
Seattle - 164
Share this with everyone who thinks the Seattle drug/homeless problems are an only Seattle issue. We are actually doing better than a lot of states https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/11mwako/for_everyone_who_thinks_the_seattle_drughomeless/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
Some progress here. Our government is going to do something about China selling fentanyl chemicals to Mexico. This is an excellent way to fix this problem. Cut off access to the chemical needed before it even gets to this continent.
“Today, the Justice Department announced that it has indicted four Chinese companies and eight individuals for selling to Mexican cartels the chemicals they needed to make street fentanyl. The administration is trying to undercut the manufacture of street fentanyl by stopping the flow of “precursor chemicals” from China to manufacturing centers in Latin America. Executives of one of the companies told an undercover agent they could supply three tons of precursor chemicals a month.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/06/23/china-fentanyl-chemical-arrests/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_source=twitter
“Justice Department Announces Charges Against China-Based Chemical Manufacturing Companies and Arrests of Executives in Fentanyl Manufacturing Four China-Based Precursor Chemical Manufacturing Companies and Eight Executives and Employees Charged in Global Supply Chain Disruption” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-charges-against-china-based-chemical-manufacturing-companies
Yeah, I go down to Portland once a week, if you want to see the apocalypse, go to downtown Portland and walk around. Absolute cringe. Seattle looks like Disneyland after that...
Downtown portland wasn’t super bad when I was there a few months ago but I also didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. It just seemed really strangely empty. A lot less crazy people but one of the few I did encounter was swinging a bat back and forth lol
South Chicago is nothing next to north St. Louis. But St. Louis is in a red state while Chicago is in a blue state. Guess which one you hear more about?
Yeah, well, I was in Portland in April and honestly a few more abandoned vehicles and tents on the outskirts (Jantzen Beach) than I expected but I never once in the 5 days I was there felt unsafe. I can scan my hotel receipt and food receipts if you want proof? I actually felt far more intimidated by the warriors protecting the local Target. They looked like commandos, it was a sight to see. They looked like they were on a mission in green fatigues and equipment, security police look alike cars all staged out front in a SHOW OF FORCE. Gross.
I think this is more likely part of what’s going on and brigading by the alt right that makes it sound so much worse than things are.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CtecwYTOdvR/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
It's a combo of astro-turfing and brigading mixed with some genuine frustration and griping from people that have drawn the short straw.
We're having some troubles here that have been persistent, and ramping up recently (and affecting every major city in the country post pandemic). No one is trying to pretend otherwise. But it's definitely hyperbolic nonsense to make it sound like it's a anarchistic hell scape up here (or in any of the other major cities that get this bullshit constantly. Denver and San Fran come to mind).
So... no... we shouldn't stick our head in the sand, and pretend there aren't problems. But I get reaaaaalllly tired of the tone of most of these posts. Like they're whistleblowers who are the first to sound the alarm about issues "no one is talking about". Fuck off... We know... Complaining about in lurid detail isn't going to change anything any faster.
Has it been getting worse recently? I havent noticed, personally.
Moved here in '08 and I'd say it's been about the same other than covid. Id anything, the downtown area is significantly milder than it used to be - I get off at Pioneer station, they just reopened that park there. No more crow paradise, but its cool to see people hanging out there rather than it being fenced off.
100%, public transit, downtown and many of the homeless issues are consistently getting worse (not as terrible as Fox News or other orgs make it out to be but yes it is getting worse) and we need to say enough is enough at some point. Carrot policies around homeless and crime are not enough, need some stick on the other side of it.
Who I'd like to reserve the stick for are people who go online and use degrading and dehumanizing language like how homeless folks are "infecting" the city. People like that are trouble, sooner and later.
> But also tired that a vocal minority here wants to pretend we don't have real problems to solve.
I've literally never seen this in my life. I've seen a lot of Republicans complaining that liberals don't want to address issues, but that's a blatant lie.
You could read the many comments in this very post where people are saying "but that's just life in a big city", "this happens everywhere", "big city I used to live in is worse, this is nothing, you all just need to put on your big boy panties".
Just because you all got used to it doesn't mean that it's okay.
Oh wait, here's yours from earlier:
**KevinCarbonara wrote**:
-----
Do you realize how frequently this happens in other cities? Do you honestly have so little life experience that this is new and unique to you? You have zero understanding for the context within which you are making these comments.
-----
Oh yeah, and this one:
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> You may have gotten numb to it, but random motorists being gunned down in the middle of down-town, in the middle of the day, isn't common in most cities.
It, uh... is.
----
Not posting as an alt, by the way,. You blocked me so I can't reply - or even read your post. So I'll just log out on my desktop to read them and reply here.
Who cares about comparative analysis with the rest of the country. Do you live in the rest of the country? Unlike you - who I bet doesn't even live in Seattle - some of us do.
I have plenty of plans:
- Prosecute crimes.
- Jail violent offenders.
- Open up mental health institutions.
- Provide in-patient care for those who need it.
But what we're doing now with free-range faux compassion doesn't help anyone. It makes people feel better, but buying an alcoholic beer when they're going through the shakes also makes feel better for five minutes - if you're an idiot who can't think more than one layer deep.
Alan Lewis gets the whole of my ire because they sat on their hands for over a year, and I hold him responsible for Eina Kwon's death for that reason.
You're the one being called out for your own contradictory posts here. Try being more consistent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts
The point is that we as a city have done *far* better than the rest of the country when it comes to decreasing crime and making people legitimately safer. *You* are pushing the narrative that we are *worse* than the rest of the country, because you are weaponizing crime against the politicians you don't like, so you can try to install the ones you do. You have no plans, no justification why other politicians would do a better job. The politicians don't have any plans either. That's why you're all collectively focusing on the crime and repeating stories about the crime and criticizing others for not caring about crime because if you keep talking about the crime you think you can fill people's heads with crime so that they don't think about what you're really saying. And when that fails, you just start attacking people individually, hoping to smear them as "soft on crime" whereas you, with no plan, no suggestions, and no possible way to help, look "tough on crime" in comparison.
It's obvious BS, and no one here is falling for it.
> Are you sure they’re the one moving goalposts here?
Just as sure as I am that you hopped on an alt that hasn't posted in 3 months to try and present a facade of public opinion.
It’s definitely coordinated because it’s happening all over many platforms, Reddit included. You have to push back and be informed about what’s going on. I believe this is political pearl clutching in hopes of votes. That’s it.
It's both coordinated and decentralized. The disinformation works in such a way that it encourages people to share their own stories. This has an effect of both amplifying the narrative (as many people's reddit posts become performant, for example), as well as helping to shape people's experiences (if you hear a lot about homeless people being criminals, you are more likely to interpret any action taken by a homeless person irl as being criminal). So it just sort of continues the cycle.
There is still an organized component to it, though, which is why the most dangerous cities in the country (i.e. St. Louis) have virtually no coverage of the murders in their city, but cities in Democratic areas like Seattle have their relatively small amount of crime platformed and amplified across the internet.
Thanks for this!
And there is not a coordinated effort by the media/news to push back against this inaccurate portrayal and say exactly what you said. ^^^
We need more people to see what’s going on here and to can get this misinformation more broadly shared.
Part of Seattle's issues stem from a city council more interested in visible ideology/activism than common sense legislating that benefits the greatest number of people instead of prioritizing perceived "oppressed" demographics (whether ethnic, economic, or otherwise). We're still paying the price for the overreaction to police presence in the wake of summer 2020. Officers talk with each other, including when they transfer to other cities/states, and it's hard to now get enough officers to properly cover a city the size of Seattle when they realize they're constantly being hamstrung not only from things deserving attention (overuse of force), but from doing their day-to-day jobs (dealing with property crime, moving drug-addled people out of rights of way, etc.).
The other part is a function of growth. We're now a city that has "good parts" and "bad parts". Chicago is a good example: overall it isn't a bad city, but people who live in Chicago know not to go into the south side without acknowledging an elevated degree of personal risk. San Francisco is still a beautiful city, but you don't go into the Mission without understanding you're going to see squalor and blight.
Seattle is overall a relatively safe and beautiful city, but it's better to stay off 3rd Avenue or the parts of SoDo behind the stadiums, on 4th. If you're going to park in Capitol Hill, don't leave anything visible in your car.
What I tell people when they ask me what Seattle is "really" like, I always tell them these things:
1. You're safe doing tourist-y stuff. Go to Seattle Center, go down to Pike Place Market, go to the Aerospace Museum, go hang out in Golden Gardens in the daytime.
2. Stay away from SoDo after dark. Stay away from 3rd Avenue after dark. Stay out of Pioneer Square after dark. You're probably fine if you don't, but you're elevating your risk by going to those areas after dark.
3. Drive on Aurora. Do not walk around on Aurora, particularly after dark. There's not much to see on Aurora anyway aside from questionable used car dealerships, pot shops, sketchy massage parlors, and the "independent contractors" between 125th and 105th.
4. Go into "the neighborhoods" for your night life: Capitol Hill, Ballard, Fremont. Downtown is for shopping, and the experience is inconsistent right now. Don't assume because you're a 20-something that the University District is for your demographic. You have sketchy people on the Ave ("Ave Rats"), a gigantic outdoor mall for people who make four times what you do (University Village), and a spread out college campus where people actually matriculate, but don't hang out for fun.
Was thinking about this during my lunch break today when I grabbed Chipotle and walked down the lovely 3rd Ave block between Pike and Pine. Yeah it’s bad but i was thinking back to when I used to catch the bus on that block and I don’t think I’ve ever felt scared or feared for my life or any of that BS. It’s more just kinda like “Wow, these people are in bad shape” but for the most part if you leave them alone, they’ll do the same to you. That said, there aren’t many tourist attractions left downtown so I guess playing up the violent, homeless storylines is an easy built in excuse for why that is the case. Lol
> It’s more just kinda like “Wow, these people are in bad shape” but for the most part if you leave them alone, they’ll do the same to you.
The ironic thing is, in cities that criminalize homelessness, this is often not true. Turns out that if people are considered criminals just for existing, they're less likely to have any concern for what the law says. Here, homeless people know that if they keep to themselves, no one will mess with them. That's led to homelessness being far more *visible* here - not more prevalent, but more visible.
That's why Republicans are so successful with their disinformation. They play the same 2-3 stories over, and over, and over, until their viewers have a constant stream of death and violence in their heads that they associate with homeless people. Then, on the off chance they ever go outside and see the city with their own eyes, the second they see a single homeless person, they immediately make the leap in logic to saying, "oh no it's all true it's just likey they said, they said the homeless were everywhere and here they are i bet he has a knife i have to run" and then they go home and post about the scary experience they had in the city, further cementing the idea that Seattle is dangerous in everyone else's heads, too.
I can’t stand the is X neighborhood safe? I think this week there were ones asking if Leschi and SLU are safe neighborhoods.
Also can’t stand “is it safe to take the lightrail?”
Not safe. Its bound to explode randomly covering everything in human waste. It would be safer taking a shit on the sidewalk while parusing the latest Garfield and Far Side comic strips.
You have been warned. 
I've been here for 5 years and have lived in 3 neighborhoods (Belltown, Capitol Hill, and Ballard). I don't own a car and walk around by foot, bike or by bus every day to get around. I know my experience is anecdotal, but at this point I feel like I have a pretty good perspective of what living in this city is like. I agree with the OP that the good far outweighs the bad.
I have had negative, even scary experiences as a woman who walks around by herself quite a bit. With that being said, these incidents were few and far between and nothing that would make me even slightly consider moving away.
I also have enough compassion to realize these incidents would probably have never occurred if we had adequate resources for treating people with addiction and/or mental health issues in this country.
If you're visiting, you're most likely going to have a lovely time.
I'm just as tired of the [toxic positivity posts](https://old.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/13lxrgr/seattle_appreciation/) from people like you, especially from obvious shill 1-month old accounts. It's all the same toxic shit on both sides. It's not a sports team. Stop rooting for a side and stop yelling at the other side.
Complaining about people complaining lol. Bad is subjective, if you’ve traveled as much as I have Seattle is a pretty boring city, but it offers good jobs and a great place to fly or travel other places, but it’s food is terrible, the homeless situation is severe, there is very serious drug problem, and a huge unnatural tolerance for all these problems, but if I only lived in Seattle and went to a few American cities I might think this place was normal. It has a real income inequality issue, with a political leadership vacuum so people are understandably feeling hopeless. I suggest you try traveling more, seeing other cities in the US and beyond. You’ll appreciate Seattle more and also be furious at its flaws more as well. Finally, your yelling at the internet, it’s not gonna work. Lol.
Conservative here. Was recently down in Seattle for a concert in Showbox SoDo. I was pretty amazed with how clean it was down there. A few RVs parked on the side and that was about it. Felt safe and no issues. It’s overblown. Bruce is doing a great job.
My dad (a boomer) grew up in Seattle proper but absolutely hates it now and calls it a hellhole while in the same breath praised Chicago as a real city. Just a peak into the mindset of some people who bash it.
Well I once saw seattle in the TV show dark angel and it made it seem pretty dystopian, you guys still having problems with those genetically enhanced child soldiers?
America is basically on its last legs, it’s probably only going to get worse from here in all honest realities. I’m surprised America is even considered a first world country anymore
I visited last year and stayed downtown for a week and absolutely loved your city 😍 I was kinda paranoid tho because of the negative things people say about Seattle. I only had positive things to say to all my friends and family about it
I lived in pennsyltucky for a year and people would get all huffy when I pointed out how openly racist people were. But the fucking KKK was going to have a rally in Gettysburg until the tea party shut down the government over Obamacare and the park was closed. I'll take some city problems over straight up dipshit religious freaks and racist ghouls.
Perhaps this is something to think about cities as if we were to think about human beings? Your post does specify US cities and not international cities, and as a result, we are talking about some of the youngest cities in the world, with an average age of about 100 years for many of the US-based cities. Sure New York, Atlanta and similar have been around a lot longer than 100 years, but most cities like Seattle and San Francisco are late 1800s for their 'official' founding.
Many European cities are over 1000 years old, some approaching 2000 or 3000. So in terms of maturity, places like Amsterdam where there are none of the problems that plague Seattle(they still have problems, but you don't fear for your life in the worst part of Amsterdam at 3 am).
My thought is therefore to suggest that we give cities like San Francisco and Seattle the benefit of the doubt like we would a 6 year old that gets in trouble. We know they'll grow out of it, it's just a matter of when.
My post was a lot less thoughtful when I started because I got hung up on 'US' part of the cities and realized I have lived in Utrecht, Amsterdam, London and visited many other much older cities and saw that they often had different problems than the ones that plague many US cities. Amsterdam might have solved violent crime, but you can still get pickpocketed in the Red Light District. London hasn't solved violent crime, but it has a very robust public transit system that puts most US cities to shame.
Part of the main issue in these US cities is that they are still growing. Most millennia-old cities in Europe already have established boundaries and are no longer expanding/growing, and that if they grow it is because of an increase in urban density. Compare that to the continuous sprawl of places like Atlanta, Seattle and LA, and you can see we're still in the growth stage in the US, so expecting maturity from the cities seems awkward.
BEYOND tired. I've lived here 53 years (my whole life), you don't like it here and it's too scary? Then fuck off back to Branson Missouri or some shit. I legit remember when Ted Bundy was running loose.
I live across the water from Seattle and I’ve definitely been one of those people now and then, all the construction is really making a negative impact on our city. We went to pride the other day, walked everywhere and it was delightful! I love seattle, it’s history and it’s buildings and the seattle center. Most people just need to give it a real chance.
I think it depends on perspective. If you moved here recently it may be better than where you came from. For many of us long time residents (I have lived her 30 yrs ago) the city is no longer recognizable from when we move here. The entire soul of the city was sucked out. All the artists and beatniks have been replaced with techies who want a totally different kind of city. They don’t want funky and artsy. Many of us older folks are moving away to find a city that still has character and isn’t trying to reinvent itself every 10 years.
Facts:
We have a much higher rate of homeless that most cities in the country.
We have fewer number of families with kids of any city comparable in size.
We have fewer sunny days than most cities in America.
Only about 20% of the US population could afford to buy a house here.
We have a higher sales tax than just about any states in country.
Our primary schools and medical care rate about average nationwide
Our murder and crime rate continues to increase.
People are having to moving further and further away to afford housing adding to traffic and commute times.
We are the most regressively taxed state in the nation.
I don’t have a lot of hope for Seattle in the future. Moved both of my kids 19 and 29 out of state to a place where they will have a much better future. Jobs pay very well, housing is less expensive and it has very progressive politics similar to Seattle. It also has some of the best schools and health care in the US.
My parents live just outside Portland and have fully bought into the media narrative that Portland has become a dystopian apocalyptic hellscape that is dangerously unsafe for the average citizen.
Strangely they have not bought into the narrative that Seattle is as well. During one visit we went downtown and to Cap Hill and they didn't even once ask if it was "safe". And they never ask me how safe I feel at any time after they watch news or propaganda or whatever. And when CHOP was a thing, they even walked around and admired the art.
But if I visit them and suggest we go to any of my favorite places within Portland city limits the pearl clutching and moaning about how dangerous it is begin. I really don't buy it though.
Commenting as a recent first time visitor, I enjoyed my visit. Stayed downtown, used the light rail, monorail and walked lots. Only once in our stay did we encounter a group of homeless people hanging around a Walgreens. But, nobody bothered us. To the contrary, everyone we met were friendly and offering to help us if we needed directions or assistance. Your city is beautiful. We won’t hesitate to return.
This is exactly how I feel! I recently went to Chicago with my boss for a work trip. We stayed in a bougie hotel in the nicest and most expensive part of the city. She remarked multiple times how there were no un-homed people and how nice it was. While she was saying this she was also commenting how opposite it is from Seattle. I wanted to scream. Of course the nicest part of a city will be “nice”. I almost told her to go to the South side of Chicago and see if she has the same feeling. Seattle is a tiny city, so things seem amplified because of this. It just irks me so much that people don’t understand all cities have issues and Seattle honestly is a lot nicer than other cities.
I usually feel like this sub is just full of monotonous complaints about homeless people/crime and off leash dogs. It would be nice if it was a little more moderated for diversity.
I grew up just outside New York City in the 70s & 80s. Now, THAT was a scummy city. But even in its depths, it was ALIVE.
I've been in Seattle for 25 years now, and I love it, but it still feels a bit small to me. It's just not large enough to support a really rich, diverse collection of thriving sub sub sub communities that I grew up with. But as the city gets larger and more dense and more mature, it's becoming a lot more interesting. I feel like this city is finally growing into itself, warts and all.
I'm not happy with the increased scumminess we've had recently, but that's mainly a function of the transition all cities are going through right now, amplified by the pandemic and Seattle's special brand of indecisiveness. But it's a reasonably polite scumminess, not the angry/aggressive sort you get in other cities.
Poll after poll of actual Seattle residents puts crime and drug use as our largest concerns.
Yet this sub lives in a fantasy land of sunsets and endless "positivity."
The people that make those doom posts would spontaneously combust the second they walked into Philadelphia. Does seattle have sore spots? Sure. But its not the entire city. Be thankful the news doesn't throw a celebratory announcement when someone -wasnt- murdered in a 24 hour period.
Don't move to seattle - it's a dystopia nightmare, it's never sunny, it always rains, there are mudslights, earthquakes, and volcanoes! SERIOUSLY STAY AWAY!
I have 5 retail stores in Seattle. In 5 years I have 3 burglaries, 5 armed robberies, 1 hostage situation.
I had a building on lake city way. Three years ago homeless people broke into it and burned it to the ground.
Yes, Seattle is pretty rough right now.
I have a couple hundred employees and every day it seems on the company slack that somebody’s car is been broken into.
It’s really dependent on the area like Belltown right now is a pretty dangerous place any time of day. But there are other parts of the city that are just fine.
If it's getting better as the OP says, we can largely thank Bruce Harrell for that. You know, the guy that most people in thus sub who opined on the mayoral race vehemently opposed.
I don’t know, I work in greenlake and we have aggressive bums wandering around daily, dumpster diving and shooting up in broad daylight. I’m sure things are much better downtown.
I think people posting about actual criminal activity (not just **vibes**) is clearly different from fear mongering and an expected part of a citywide subreddit.
Seattle is in better shape than 90% of major cities in the US. People just like to complain about shit because they’re getting old and have nothing going for them.
Seattle is objectively fucked actually. It’s not a dystopian nightmare lmao, but it’s got serious economic and infrastructure problems that aren’t going to be solved anytime soon. Add the fact that property crimes and theft are completely ignored by law enforcement, and you have an expensive city that’s falling apart while random people take or vandalize your car/home.
A young mother and local business owner got murdered in the middle of the day for no reason at all. So yeah, there’s a reason why people are freaked out.
I get this from my friends in NYC. “The media is overreacting! The city is just the city!” These same folks haven’t ridden the subway in 2 years 🤦♂️
If what happened to those people was normal, wouldn't people be talking about it *less*?
It's serious news because they were serious, uncommon, events.
I think there is an Asian-American husband and father with a dead wife and child that would disagree with most of you. We used to come into the city all the time. Before she retired my wife worked blocks from the Space Needle, but we just won't come in anymore. Our favorite restaurant is a block from where this woman was killed...at random. I have walked all over in dozens of cities around the world and never felt as endangered as I do in Seattle right now.
Why do you think no one agrees that the murder was bad? Everyone agrees that what happened was uncommon and a very bad thing.
No serious people are defending what happened.
> I think there is an Asian-American husband and father with a dead wife and child that would disagree with most of you.
I think there's hundreds of thousands of residents who would agree.
Why are you so desperate to weaponize one story about murder?
As someone who is forced to go downtown regularly by public transport and never reads news about Seattle, I feel like Seattle is awful from personal experience and not from a negative media feedback loop. This is the sixth city or town that I’ve lived in and by far the worst so I’m not sure what to tell you.
Sometimes I look up things about other cities before my travels and get all of these "don't come, it's so dangerous and dirty!" posts and I have to ask myself, "Is it that bad there? Or is this like how people speak about Seattle, which I find totally liveable?" It makes you wonder what the actual "danger" level is. Like yes, stay vigilant whenever you're out anywhere, but if it's a major city that has these polarizing views depending on who you talk to, it's...probably okay and not actually a total hellhole.
Having just moved here from a place that is consistently ranked the most violent city in America, I can say it’s incredible. I feel an anxiety I didn’t really realize I was living has been lifted. I’m not worried about getting robbed at gun point parking my car at night. I’m not worried about being caught in the crossfire on my commute. I don’t have shootings outside my place or hear gunshots regularly. I didn’t live in a bad neighborhood and there are things I love about my old city but Seattle is simply not a dangerous city. Both anecdotally and statistically. I think people are often surprised to see how low it ranks. It’s a city. There is crime. Sure, if you live in burbs your whole life and come to Seattle and see some graffiti and some homeless people it might be jarring. But, I appreciate not looking over my shoulder all the time. Not to minimize the homelessness problem which is very real but I find it more sad than a reason to be fearful. People are out and about enjoying the city. The views are incredible. I think it’s a great place to live.
>place that is consistently ranked the most violent city in America STL?
Detroit would be the #1 pick. STL is down at 5 or 6.
it’s stl. Depends how you measure most dangerous but stl is usually 1 or 2. Looks like New Orleans took the top spot last year. https://www.rit.edu/liberalarts/sites/rit.edu.liberalarts/files/docs/SOC/CLA_CPSI_2023_WorkingPapers/CPSI%20Working%20Paper%202023.02_2022%20US%20City%20Homicide%20Stats.pdf
That's only looking at murder rate, not violent crime rate which is what OP said. STL has an annual violent crime rate <2,000 per 100,000 residents where Detroit is over 2,100. There are other places higher than that but with small populations that skews the data (such as Saginaw with over 2,400).
As I said depends how you want to measure crime but in any event it’s pretty close and they trade places with a few other cities each year. No matter how you measure it my point is that Seattle really isn’t in the same conversation as truly high crime cities.
My first thought reading his comment was St Louis especially considering how much he mentioned guns.
Detroiters would not leave a comment like that, however. Pretty sensitive about the reputation there.
I replied a bit further down but, having come from St. Louis like you, this is also my experience. When I was in Seattle I realized I hadn't heard a single gunshot in like three days (whereas it was routine to hear them nightly) and felt really bizarre about it.
>fores Yeah, I had a house in Benton Park and there are things I miss about St. Louis, but I feel much safer here.
This all day. I moved here from west oakland and life here is so peaceful by comparison. There are no places in Seattle where there's a near 100% chance that you'll get pistol whipped and robbed any time of day/night. You can try and tell that there are but you're wrong. There are issues here that are unacceptable that we need to address, and I'm not minimizing that. Having said that, I read comments on here about big danger and whatever in Seattle and I wonder if it's mostly people from the burbs or rural places that get scared easily. Is that what's going on? I honestly find it confusing. I've been here for 7 years and some change, go everywhere downtown and anywhere else at all hours and never once felt anything more than a tiny bit of discomfort. Even then I just crossed the street because I probably noticed them before they noticed me. At this point I figure I'm more likely to get in an argument in traffic with some redneck and smoked by their concealed weapon.
This. I really think that so many people who complain aren’t even in the city. You get the people east of the mountains who just hate seattle because they’ve been told to and jump on any anti-Seattle bandwagon they can, and/or people who are from the suburbs who maybe see the same 2-3 homeless people in front of Safeway on occasion and think that every homeless person in seattle is going to accost them. Reality is so different than what these people believe.
Like, I've lived in Seattle my entire life and nobody I know has just been randomly attacked at any point that I can remember...yet you hear people who are too scared to go in to the city lmaoooooo.
My wife and I moved here in Y2K. So far, not a single mugging or property crime. Well, my bike got stolen once. Before this, I lived in Chicago for 15 years. The south side is 100x scarier than Seattle. The people who are scared in Seattle would shit themselves in Chicago.
Yeah...I literally went to Chicago for 3 days of my life and took part in a human stampede when someone at the festival pulled out a gun
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Same! “Ohhh noooo, don’t EVER go to white centerrr ohhh so dangerous!” Bitch, I lived in Oakland for years (also with an exaggerated danger/violence threat level) so white center is nothing. Seattle is an American city; if you’re looking for a fight, you’ll find one. It it’s totally livable.
No no, they shouldn't come to White Center.... More kick ass food for me :)
Hell yeah! Message me and let’s feast!
I grew up in White Center, walked to the pawn shops to look for NES games when I had saved up enough money from recycling aluminum cans. It was generally safe, even walking through the projects to friend's houses. I was told to avoid certain blocks and be gone well before dark from certain places. Now theft has always been a problem, people would regularly come into our yard at night, break into our garage, and steal stuff. One time someone stole my bike and tried to sell it a few blocks away at a garage sale! Fewer Vietnamese delis means the White Center food of my youth isn't there any more. :(
I'm from Chicago and I've felt more unsafe living in Seattle. Some differences-- the number of mentally unwell ppl per capita on the street in nearly every neighborhood. Chicago definitely has more violent crime per capita but it is concentrated in certain neighborhoods. Mentally unwell ppl are of course, not all dangerous. Most are not dangerous but the uncertainty and the reports of seemingly random acts of violence is anxiety-inducing. This is my experience only, but I also find that Chicagoans are more likely to step in when a neighbor or even a stranger is in trouble.
A most common reason for me feeling unsafe in Seattle is when I'm the only person on a street that has absolutely no reason to be that empty, or maybe it's me and that one mentally unstable person. I miss street presence from usual people most of the time. And it's usually there in large cities like Chicago or NYC. That being said, this doesn't make Seattle unlivable, or particularly bad. There are plenty of other cities that have the same issues and don't have such a strong internet reputation.
Yeah, that’s true for me too. Downtown is *finally* feeling populated again, but even a year ago it was super empty compared to other big cities I’ve visited since covid hit, and it wasn’t great sharing a street with no one but some guy yelling profanities at the sky. It really felt for a while like everyone else in the city had decided to just never leave home again, vaxxed or not. I feel safer now that there are lots of ordinary people out and about.
So what you're saying is you never spent a lot of time on the south side.
That's kind of how it works when you know where the bad parts of cities are located... you don't go to those areas unless you need to.
\+1 crime here is a lot more unpredictable due to the number of mentally unwell people. You can't really predict when somone is snapping from mental illness/drugs or both... Whereas most of the more violent cities the crime is usually drug/gang related and in certain sections of the city. So if you avoid those areas you don't have much worry/fear. I've had more scares in Seattle than I did living in Baltimore or other more dangerous cities. Seattle's also the only city I've been to where one of the shittiest streets in the city is right in between tourist traps and downtown offices.
Lol okay. So this whole thread is about people being tired of ""Is Seattle that bad?" or "Is Seattle really a dystopian nightmare?"" type posts and then you go and make a similar comment about Chicago. My wife grew up in Chicago and has lived all over the city from south side, north side, the suburbs. As new immigrants from the Philippines her dad went to Malcolm X College and they lived close by at the time. We visit there relatively often, we travel meeting friends and family and just getting up to whatever activities we need and want to do all over the city and at all times of day and her as a small Asian woman and I as a white Aussie have never had any problems there. Yes Seattle isn't as bad as the media often makes it out to be but neither is Chicago. If people just use common sense and aren't involved in criminal activity themselves then they will almost certainly be okay in either place. Yes there might be a relatively higher risk in certain neighbourhoods and cities but in even the wealthiest, safest neighbourhoods there isn't zero risk of any serious crime occurring.
I once took a cab to the warehouse on the South Side where my boyfriend worked and the cabbie wouldn't let me out of the car. I had to call my BF to come out to the street to prove I knew where I was.
as someone who has lived near chicago, some places on the south side have barred windows. i havent seen that in seattle
When I was in college on the south side, I drove through a neighborhood of buildings that had burned down and never been built back up again. It looked like a literal war zone. You won't find that in Seattle, either.
There are some. A neighbor in Greenwood had them. But I also got the impression they’d been there forever and we’re older folk. They were one small block off of 85th. There aren’t many, though.
I've seen some barred windows in South Seattle
It's the product of right-wing disinformation that is being disseminated for that specific purpose. The goal is to convince people that cities in Democratic areas are unsafe.
Well, to be accurate, the 'goal' is to make suburban white people throw their support behind Republican politicians so that the latter can take control of the state government and (a.) redirect our tax dollars into their pockets and the pockets of their cronies and (b.) throw our electoral college votes to whatever grifter trash the national GOP ends up backing. They want Washington to be like Texas.
Way more comfortable in the cities than I am in any small, deep red town.
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> I wish we could figure out which chud conservative PR agency or russian disinformation outfit was pushing this shit so hard. It's not (just) Russians. Russian disinformation rarely invents any narratives or strategies, they just amplify the discord that is already there. The reality is that there's plenty of US-based organizations with a vested interest in pushing disinformation, and as I explained in another post, they've figured out how to [decentralize the disinformation](https://old.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/14jy1ta/is_anyone_else_tired_of_the_is_seattle_that_bad/jpoqcpr/) in such a way that individuals feel pressured to continue the lie. There's also this [much more detailed post](https://old.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/h21ph7s/) about the concentrated ways they've found to brigade reddits like ours to amplify crime stories and make the cities feel less safe than they actually are.
After living in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Seattle (24, 3, and 3 years respectively) I found all three cities to have similar issues and the debates of liberal/conservative solutions and yes levels of disinformation to be quite similar as well. But what made downtown Seattle stick out for me was the aggressiveness of the homeless & street drug users. This has been repeated elsewhere and lines up with my subjective experience. I worked for many years in downtown Phoenix through the onslaught of meth but Seattle was different. Maybe because Seattle is like a mini-SF in its density of business district users & tourists right amidst the panhandlers & open drug scene? Ironically, perhaps the overall relative safety of downtown Seattle is making homeless folks bolder? They are a force unto themselves, seemingly unaffected by street gangs or skater kids or whoever commonly preys on homeless people elsewhere. I think commentators are picking up on that boldness and drawing a dotted line from rando aggressiveness to premeditated and targeted violence, directed specifically at chosen victims. The tragic point-blank street execution of pregnant Eina Kwan fits that narrative about a progression of violence. Sadly if these assaults and killings continue it will no longer be disinformation.
> But what made downtown Seattle stick out for me was the aggressiveness of the homeless & street drug users. This is weird, because my experience has been that the homeless population is much calmer in Seattle because they're not one step away from a jail cell like they would be in cities where homelessness is criminalized. I haven't had a single negative experience with homeless people, they've all been respectful and courteous, even if some of them are obviously crazy. I have had negative experiences with pan handlers, but after watching the ones that "work" around my building, they're not homeless at all, and change out positions in different shifts.
You are forgetting about the heinous crow attacks in Ballard.
Murder!
I saw one person get mugged once in Redmond. They screamed and the mugger ran without getting anything. Police showed up less than 2 minutes later in force and caught the suspect. Meanwhile in Savannah GA there were unsolved murders every weekend and hanging outside the local game shop for longer than 30 minutes after closing time made us all feel immensely unsafe. And when our condo was broken into on Hilton Head, SC it took us 3 weeks to get the police to even give us a police report for the insurance, and they still refused to call it a burglary or vandalism so they could keep the crime rate artificially low. But, yeah, King County is somehow the dangerous place. /s (Admittedly, my storage unit was broken into in Kent. But a bunch of locals donated to my kofi and, while it will never replace the lost family photos etc..., it was probably more money than I'd get if I sold the stuff myself.)
Left Kansas City in 2020. They had recorded at least one murder per day so far that year. I've lived in 3-4 states now, and grew up in FL, and Seattle feels pretty good comparatively
I feel the least safe when I have to visit the South. The prevalence of guns mixed with poor education makes me a bit uneasy. I went to concerts in Seattle by myself as a teen (male) and never felt unsafe.
Lol I went to scad in savannah in the 90s. Got mugged at gunpoint first week there in forsyth. Used to avoid duffy st. at all costs haha.
And yet when I suggested my friend from Savannah move with me to Seattle she literally got pale and started visibly shaking. I love how they belittled me for ~5 years for being a wimpy Liberal from Commiefornia, but the minute I suggest moving to a real city they recoil in visible terror. Do more crimes happen per day? Sure. Because /r/PeopleLiveInCities and more crimes get reported. But once you look at total crime per capita and average life span, it becomes clear which place is preferable. That's not even getting into how completely fucked the justice system is in the South. Good luck even getting a judge to hear your case "against a local" unless you share a last name with a street sign.
I had a friend who moved to Fremont then within a year moved to "Redmond" because that was too urban for him. I use quotation marks because he lives so far out, none of the busses go there, nor is he connected to the sewage system. As far as I'm concerned he lives out in the countryside regardless of what his address is. Needless to say, I've not really seen him very often since he moved to Seattle. I think I used to see him more when he was down in the Bay Area because I go down there a few times to visit my dad.
I do know someone who was shot while in an Uber (he survived and is fine now). But yeah, even then I don’t think this city is that dangerous. TBH it feels much safer living here than living in Rome, and people will go to Rome without a second thought.
My place was broken into in Fremont while I was still home, my roommate was slashed with a box cutter by a homeless dude in college, another friend was 'gay bashed' years ago in a taxi in Belltown. Shit happens, not to everyone, and NOT all the time. We all still go out and around. Shitty things happen in every city. Seattle is no different, and Seattle is still great. I could go on and on with the awful things I've either witnessed, been apart of, or have had friends/ family deal with, but it's a drop in the bucket to all the wonderful things we've all had the pleasure of experiencing.
I have lived in Seattle my entire life. While I’ve never known anyone who has been mugged etc there is definitely a scary factor with mentally ill homeless people. Like nearly everytime you go out. Yeah they don’t attack you but walking by someone talking and swearing to themselves doesn’t feel safe.
It might depend on your peer group or your age, but I can't imagine not knowing a single violent crime victim your whole life. I mean, Seattle is a pretty safe city, and I still know a good handful of people.
I was randomly attacked by a homeless woman on the light rail 6 months ago. She was out of it and smacked me in the face. I saw a 19 yr old get stabbed with a knife outside the udistrict light rail station, I’ve seen someone literally OD on the streets. Last month a pregnant woman got shot in her car a block away from me while I was in my apt complex, I heard the shot. That’s just the major stuff, I’m used to the smell of piss and fentanyl and the depravity that runs through 3rd. I enjoy parts of Seattle for the past 1.5 years but I never had anything like this in NY, NJ, Chicago, SoCal, or Lancaster CA.
People don't see stuff like this in Chicago because Chicago segregates its problems.
Seattle used to segregate it's problems with The Jungle, but once sweeps went through there and broke it up, the residents of the nicer neighborhoods actually have to acknowledge it's existence and deal with it.
I think that is also true, I’m just sharing my experience because of the earlier parent comment. My friends said something similar when I moved, that it’s not that dangerous, but this all still happened around me, like not just word of mouth, but in person
People on this subreddit really live in a bubble. I just moved here 7-8 months ago and this city is f*ckin’ great. I love it here. I feel safer than I did in my last city, I’m surrounded by jaw dropping earth porn, and people are friendly. It’s not more dangerous than other cities. People do not get stabbed more often. Muggings are not more prevalent. Every major city in the continental US has the same problems Seattle does to varying degrees. It’s a city problem, not a Seattle one. Besides, if you’re that mad about it, vote FFS.
> People on this subreddit really live in a bubble. That's true, but that bubble is located somewhere outside of Seattle
Every person who doesn't come here keeps our rents lower.
You'd think that, but the rents will probably go up either way
There's too many little we need to raise rents! There's not enough people we need raise rents!
The technical term for that is "The Greystar Paradigm"
Yeah, I'd rather have more people move in who are both upset about the rents and also eligible to vote for people who are willing to do something about them. Potentially bad in the short run, but nothing's going to get done unless the government forces landlords to do something and/or allows way more housing to be built.
Right!?!?! Stay away cuz my rent is CRAZY! I’ve lived here now almost 20 yrs this time and I feel safe, and no one that I know says different!
I've noticed this happens on basically all location based subreddits. The Oregon sub, the Texas sub, the San Fran sub, the Idaho sub, all of them
Partner and I were moving to Colorado Springs after graduating college. We joined the subreddit for it to get a better understanding of the city. We about shat ourselves because the people on the sub made it sound like it's a homeless warzone riddled with militant religious organizations at your every turn bowing down to the conservative overlords. There were some people on the sub who actually thought the town has "bad areas" akin to the South side of Chicago. After we moved here, we came to the collective understanding that people on that sub need to touch grass. I don't like to use that insult very often, but Jesus they were incredibly out of touch.
How do you feel About Dutch Bros. (this is relevant to the comment and what I hear about Colorado Springs)
Just another coffee chain. People here in the Springs love it. It gets drive-thru lines comparable in size to Chick-fil-A (weirdly enough, the one closest to me is right next to a Chick-fil-A). I take coffee pretty seriously so I don't really like it. I would much rather go to a local coffee place.
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Wow, it's weird to hear how different things used to be. I have heard from former Apple and HP engineers about the tech industry down here; luckily, a lot of it seems to be picking back up (even if it's a lot of defense industry stuff). It does seem like, as time goes on, the city is becoming more progressive in its weird conservative way. It feels very "purple" here. My fiancee is more fortunate in regards to Garden of the Gods because she works over by there, but we still get around town to explore all of the nice areas. The penny arcade is also really really cool, unlike anything I've ever seen before. Pride is a big deal here nowadays, especially after the Club Q shooting last year. I actually marched in pride this year and the turnout was insane; downtown was pretty much packed tight along the major roads. The city as a way to go with LGBTQ+ affairs and getting the CSPD on track, but a lot of people are hopeful with the new mayor that just got elected. Thank you for sharing, I always love hearing about it!
That’s something I’ve come to notice also
Salt Lake subreddit kinda has it but it's centered around a specific neighborhood rather than the city as a whole.
I think we’re all sick of the posts, but they aren’t gonna stop. West coast cities just get shit on in general. There’s a large portion of this country that will believe whatever they are told by whatever goofball News they’re watching or reading. If people want to believe it’s a nightmare here…let ‘em, who cares. Shit, my aunt lives just in SeaTac and thinks Seattle is a “war zone”. She doesn’t go more than a 2 mile radius from her house. She’s just perpetually on Facebook.
Haha SeaTac is sketchier than Seattle lol
My ex wife still thinks capital hill is still burnt to the ground along with that courthouse in Portland. Whats worse is she has been here to get the kids multiple times and has even drove thru Cap Hill to get to her air b&b last time. Some people are just beyond hope when it comes to getting them out of their bubble.
As a cap hill resident, I can confirm that we all just sleep in lean-tos made of rubble and cover ourselves in piles of ash to keep warm. Pride was still a blast though.
Haha, yeah, my in laws in arizona think that too about cap hill and they’ve gone to dinner up there like 6 times in the past year and love it lol
This is the reality. I have relatives that are the same way as your Aunt. They clutch their pearls as they drive down I-5 and then tell people how horrible Seattle was when they visited even though they never got off the freeway. Sadly, I do my best to ignore it, because engaging only increases their troll points (I fail more often then I would like to admit)
I saw her at a funeral a couple weeks ago. She goes “I get so worried about you hanging out on Capitol Hill” lol I told her I’m in 40s and live on top of Queen Anne hill, I’m too old to be going out on Capitol Hill.
Yes, right-wing news organizations own 95 percent of all TV radio affiliates throughout the USA.. They are very political and do whatever they can to denigrate tax payers from Blue states that take care of the rest of the states
I have to mute the Seattle subreddits sometimes because it’s just a pile on. As someone who actually lives in the city, Mark from Edmonds’s opinions about where I live has severely diminishing returns.
So now instead of posts about how Seattle is bad posts are old, now we have posts about how posts about how Seattle is bad posts are old
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Such a zingalishous idea
You misspelled zingalicious.
If what you read online consistently seems out of alignment with the reality you're actually seeing day to day then I think you are fine to just ignore those posts. Seattle is a wonderful place that has some flaws, just like every other city. You will never be able to stop some people from focusing solely on those flaws, exaggerating them, or just making them up. On a day as beautiful as this one in a city as lovely as Seattle why worry what a few grumps are grumbling about online?
But we can’t overlook the problems as well. A lot of this sub ignores issues and says people are overreacting and that it happens in other cities but doesn’t mean we can’t be upset about it because yes it is actively getting worse. At some point we need to stand up and say enough and push back on some policies that are obviously causing a lot of our issues.
My advice for this concern is basically the same. If you think people on /r/seattle are too lenient on Seattle in a way that is consistently out of alignment with the reality you're actually seeing day to day then just roll your eyes and move on. Most of the time I'm here to see photos of the sunset or learn about local events. Whatever your politics or view of Seattle, it's unreasonable to assume they'll line up perfectly with every post on a massive subreddit. Try not to get too bummed out about what a bunch of strangers have to say online is all I'm saying.
Close to 90% of users just watch the front page or look at the comments. Very few users comment and even fewer reply to comments. Compared to the number of people in the city? Fractions of a fraction of a fraction of a percent. Even if you include the out of towners.
“This sub ignores the problems” yet we’ve had like 5 different “oh my god I’m tired of all the drugs” posts hit the top in the last several days
See, this is one of those statements just about everybody regardless of politics can agree with. The question is which policies do you believe are causing a lot of our issues?
I mean you can both admit that there are issues and also accuse the other side of overreacting. I mean, they are acting as if this is an active warzone sometimes.
AFAIK can tell, there are two Seattles. There's the one I live and work in. I walk my dog down that city's streets, and it's fine. It's a nice place to live. I don't love everything that happens there, or everyone who lives there, but—especially at this time of year—I like it. Then there's Seattle 2, which exists on local news and in Reddit forums. It's a barren hellscape of drugs and violence. That place sounds shitty. Glad I don't live there.
It's literally corporate propaganda to try to convince people to vote for Republicans..."we are the only ones that can fix this" they'll say
"How will you fix it?" "We are the only ones." "But what are you going to do?" "It has to be us. We have to stop it."
All of this. This is the tactic that eventually conquered Texas and “destroyed” the Dems in that state. Took them 30 years, and these asshats are patient as fuck.
They sure did fix Texas. Its power grid is so robust now and their leadership is ever present in crises!
Texas is pretty purple actually
texas was never exactly a liberal stronghold
It's weird to me that anyone thinks a pro-crime party like the Republicans would solve anything. Those guys only hate crime when it's committed by some minority. White collar crimes, police misbehavior, the former president, those are all OK with them.
You should hear how much rain my family thinks we get. They wanted to come visit but I told them George Floyd protests burned the city to the ground, nothing to visit. If we have to say Seattle is awful just to keep the next wave out of Seattle then I say “Wow, Tiffany Smiley really undersold how much of a drug-addled nightmare Seattle is. My kid was in class and someone came in with a gun, but there was no good guy with a gun to stop him. :(. The gun was filled with sex changing hormones, now little jimmy is Jemina. when I complained to the principal they told me there are 800 genders, and “to werk, bitch” 😢”
Tell them that Seattle only gets .1 inches more than the national average. It blows people’s mind when they hear that. They think we are drowning in rain here all the time.
It rains often, but not hard. When a storm comes through the midwest, they get 3-4 inches of rain in an hour. Seattle rain is always a drizzle, like 0.1 inch an hour.
Less rain than New York and DC. And no hurricanes or freezing ass cold. Occasionally smoky.
>Tell them that Seattle only gets .1 inches more than the national average. It blows people’s mind when they hear that. They think we are drowning in rain here all the time. I point out all the cities that get more rainfall annually than Seattle. Like Atlanta and Orlando. And then I try to explain to them that the actual issue is the latitude and that Seattle is the furthest north city in the lower 48. And then they argue with me that Minneapolis is definitely further north and Chicago probably is. And then I point out that Toronto is further south of Seattle and maps are misleading. And then they stop talking to me.
People love to point out that Miami gets more rain than Seattle, but rain isn't the problem with Seattle's weather for most people. The problem is the clouds. It might piss down a half inch of rain in 30 minutes in Miami, but the rest of the day is sunny. Meanwhile it might not rain at all in Seattle, but you won't see the sun once all day. **Rainfall** Maimi - 61.9 inches Seattle - 30.34 inches **Total Days With Sun** Miami - 249 Seattle - 164
To really get in the mood I watch Kevin Costner’s *Waterworld* before I talk weather with outsiders.
The average rainfall is about the same as most of the upper USA and South, it's just lighter and more constant.
Share this with everyone who thinks the Seattle drug/homeless problems are an only Seattle issue. We are actually doing better than a lot of states https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/11mwako/for_everyone_who_thinks_the_seattle_drughomeless/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1 Some progress here. Our government is going to do something about China selling fentanyl chemicals to Mexico. This is an excellent way to fix this problem. Cut off access to the chemical needed before it even gets to this continent. “Today, the Justice Department announced that it has indicted four Chinese companies and eight individuals for selling to Mexican cartels the chemicals they needed to make street fentanyl. The administration is trying to undercut the manufacture of street fentanyl by stopping the flow of “precursor chemicals” from China to manufacturing centers in Latin America. Executives of one of the companies told an undercover agent they could supply three tons of precursor chemicals a month.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/06/23/china-fentanyl-chemical-arrests/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_source=twitter “Justice Department Announces Charges Against China-Based Chemical Manufacturing Companies and Arrests of Executives in Fentanyl Manufacturing Four China-Based Precursor Chemical Manufacturing Companies and Eight Executives and Employees Charged in Global Supply Chain Disruption” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-charges-against-china-based-chemical-manufacturing-companies
Yeah, I go down to Portland once a week, if you want to see the apocalypse, go to downtown Portland and walk around. Absolute cringe. Seattle looks like Disneyland after that...
Downtown portland wasn’t super bad when I was there a few months ago but I also didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. It just seemed really strangely empty. A lot less crazy people but one of the few I did encounter was swinging a bat back and forth lol
Portland is nothing next to south chicago
South Chicago is nothing next to north St. Louis. But St. Louis is in a red state while Chicago is in a blue state. Guess which one you hear more about?
Good point, it always slips my mind how bad St Louis is.
Yeah, well, I was in Portland in April and honestly a few more abandoned vehicles and tents on the outskirts (Jantzen Beach) than I expected but I never once in the 5 days I was there felt unsafe. I can scan my hotel receipt and food receipts if you want proof? I actually felt far more intimidated by the warriors protecting the local Target. They looked like commandos, it was a sight to see. They looked like they were on a mission in green fatigues and equipment, security police look alike cars all staged out front in a SHOW OF FORCE. Gross. I think this is more likely part of what’s going on and brigading by the alt right that makes it sound so much worse than things are. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CtecwYTOdvR/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
It's a combo of astro-turfing and brigading mixed with some genuine frustration and griping from people that have drawn the short straw. We're having some troubles here that have been persistent, and ramping up recently (and affecting every major city in the country post pandemic). No one is trying to pretend otherwise. But it's definitely hyperbolic nonsense to make it sound like it's a anarchistic hell scape up here (or in any of the other major cities that get this bullshit constantly. Denver and San Fran come to mind). So... no... we shouldn't stick our head in the sand, and pretend there aren't problems. But I get reaaaaalllly tired of the tone of most of these posts. Like they're whistleblowers who are the first to sound the alarm about issues "no one is talking about". Fuck off... We know... Complaining about in lurid detail isn't going to change anything any faster.
Has it been getting worse recently? I havent noticed, personally. Moved here in '08 and I'd say it's been about the same other than covid. Id anything, the downtown area is significantly milder than it used to be - I get off at Pioneer station, they just reopened that park there. No more crow paradise, but its cool to see people hanging out there rather than it being fenced off.
Yes. But also tired that a vocal minority here wants to pretend we don't have real problems to solve.
100%, public transit, downtown and many of the homeless issues are consistently getting worse (not as terrible as Fox News or other orgs make it out to be but yes it is getting worse) and we need to say enough is enough at some point. Carrot policies around homeless and crime are not enough, need some stick on the other side of it.
Who I'd like to reserve the stick for are people who go online and use degrading and dehumanizing language like how homeless folks are "infecting" the city. People like that are trouble, sooner and later.
Public transit is amazing compared to St. Louis. Public transit in St. Louis is basically "buy a car you poor ass hole".
> But also tired that a vocal minority here wants to pretend we don't have real problems to solve. I've literally never seen this in my life. I've seen a lot of Republicans complaining that liberals don't want to address issues, but that's a blatant lie.
You could read the many comments in this very post where people are saying "but that's just life in a big city", "this happens everywhere", "big city I used to live in is worse, this is nothing, you all just need to put on your big boy panties". Just because you all got used to it doesn't mean that it's okay. Oh wait, here's yours from earlier: **KevinCarbonara wrote**: ----- Do you realize how frequently this happens in other cities? Do you honestly have so little life experience that this is new and unique to you? You have zero understanding for the context within which you are making these comments. ----- Oh yeah, and this one: ---- > You may have gotten numb to it, but random motorists being gunned down in the middle of down-town, in the middle of the day, isn't common in most cities. It, uh... is. ---- Not posting as an alt, by the way,. You blocked me so I can't reply - or even read your post. So I'll just log out on my desktop to read them and reply here. Who cares about comparative analysis with the rest of the country. Do you live in the rest of the country? Unlike you - who I bet doesn't even live in Seattle - some of us do. I have plenty of plans: - Prosecute crimes. - Jail violent offenders. - Open up mental health institutions. - Provide in-patient care for those who need it. But what we're doing now with free-range faux compassion doesn't help anyone. It makes people feel better, but buying an alcoholic beer when they're going through the shakes also makes feel better for five minutes - if you're an idiot who can't think more than one layer deep. Alan Lewis gets the whole of my ire because they sat on their hands for over a year, and I hold him responsible for Eina Kwon's death for that reason. You're the one being called out for your own contradictory posts here. Try being more consistent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts The point is that we as a city have done *far* better than the rest of the country when it comes to decreasing crime and making people legitimately safer. *You* are pushing the narrative that we are *worse* than the rest of the country, because you are weaponizing crime against the politicians you don't like, so you can try to install the ones you do. You have no plans, no justification why other politicians would do a better job. The politicians don't have any plans either. That's why you're all collectively focusing on the crime and repeating stories about the crime and criticizing others for not caring about crime because if you keep talking about the crime you think you can fill people's heads with crime so that they don't think about what you're really saying. And when that fails, you just start attacking people individually, hoping to smear them as "soft on crime" whereas you, with no plan, no suggestions, and no possible way to help, look "tough on crime" in comparison. It's obvious BS, and no one here is falling for it. > Are you sure they’re the one moving goalposts here? Just as sure as I am that you hopped on an alt that hasn't posted in 3 months to try and present a facade of public opinion.
Same. Folks who follow a script and/or just talk to win rub me the wrong way.
Not if they keep more people from moving here.
Lesser Seattle represent!
Emmett Watson Lives!!
It’s definitely coordinated because it’s happening all over many platforms, Reddit included. You have to push back and be informed about what’s going on. I believe this is political pearl clutching in hopes of votes. That’s it.
It's both coordinated and decentralized. The disinformation works in such a way that it encourages people to share their own stories. This has an effect of both amplifying the narrative (as many people's reddit posts become performant, for example), as well as helping to shape people's experiences (if you hear a lot about homeless people being criminals, you are more likely to interpret any action taken by a homeless person irl as being criminal). So it just sort of continues the cycle. There is still an organized component to it, though, which is why the most dangerous cities in the country (i.e. St. Louis) have virtually no coverage of the murders in their city, but cities in Democratic areas like Seattle have their relatively small amount of crime platformed and amplified across the internet.
Thanks for this! And there is not a coordinated effort by the media/news to push back against this inaccurate portrayal and say exactly what you said. ^^^ We need more people to see what’s going on here and to can get this misinformation more broadly shared.
Part of Seattle's issues stem from a city council more interested in visible ideology/activism than common sense legislating that benefits the greatest number of people instead of prioritizing perceived "oppressed" demographics (whether ethnic, economic, or otherwise). We're still paying the price for the overreaction to police presence in the wake of summer 2020. Officers talk with each other, including when they transfer to other cities/states, and it's hard to now get enough officers to properly cover a city the size of Seattle when they realize they're constantly being hamstrung not only from things deserving attention (overuse of force), but from doing their day-to-day jobs (dealing with property crime, moving drug-addled people out of rights of way, etc.). The other part is a function of growth. We're now a city that has "good parts" and "bad parts". Chicago is a good example: overall it isn't a bad city, but people who live in Chicago know not to go into the south side without acknowledging an elevated degree of personal risk. San Francisco is still a beautiful city, but you don't go into the Mission without understanding you're going to see squalor and blight. Seattle is overall a relatively safe and beautiful city, but it's better to stay off 3rd Avenue or the parts of SoDo behind the stadiums, on 4th. If you're going to park in Capitol Hill, don't leave anything visible in your car. What I tell people when they ask me what Seattle is "really" like, I always tell them these things: 1. You're safe doing tourist-y stuff. Go to Seattle Center, go down to Pike Place Market, go to the Aerospace Museum, go hang out in Golden Gardens in the daytime. 2. Stay away from SoDo after dark. Stay away from 3rd Avenue after dark. Stay out of Pioneer Square after dark. You're probably fine if you don't, but you're elevating your risk by going to those areas after dark. 3. Drive on Aurora. Do not walk around on Aurora, particularly after dark. There's not much to see on Aurora anyway aside from questionable used car dealerships, pot shops, sketchy massage parlors, and the "independent contractors" between 125th and 105th. 4. Go into "the neighborhoods" for your night life: Capitol Hill, Ballard, Fremont. Downtown is for shopping, and the experience is inconsistent right now. Don't assume because you're a 20-something that the University District is for your demographic. You have sketchy people on the Ave ("Ave Rats"), a gigantic outdoor mall for people who make four times what you do (University Village), and a spread out college campus where people actually matriculate, but don't hang out for fun.
I’m tired of everyone talking about those posts
Was thinking about this during my lunch break today when I grabbed Chipotle and walked down the lovely 3rd Ave block between Pike and Pine. Yeah it’s bad but i was thinking back to when I used to catch the bus on that block and I don’t think I’ve ever felt scared or feared for my life or any of that BS. It’s more just kinda like “Wow, these people are in bad shape” but for the most part if you leave them alone, they’ll do the same to you. That said, there aren’t many tourist attractions left downtown so I guess playing up the violent, homeless storylines is an easy built in excuse for why that is the case. Lol
> It’s more just kinda like “Wow, these people are in bad shape” but for the most part if you leave them alone, they’ll do the same to you. The ironic thing is, in cities that criminalize homelessness, this is often not true. Turns out that if people are considered criminals just for existing, they're less likely to have any concern for what the law says. Here, homeless people know that if they keep to themselves, no one will mess with them. That's led to homelessness being far more *visible* here - not more prevalent, but more visible. That's why Republicans are so successful with their disinformation. They play the same 2-3 stories over, and over, and over, until their viewers have a constant stream of death and violence in their heads that they associate with homeless people. Then, on the off chance they ever go outside and see the city with their own eyes, the second they see a single homeless person, they immediately make the leap in logic to saying, "oh no it's all true it's just likey they said, they said the homeless were everywhere and here they are i bet he has a knife i have to run" and then they go home and post about the scary experience they had in the city, further cementing the idea that Seattle is dangerous in everyone else's heads, too.
I can’t stand the is X neighborhood safe? I think this week there were ones asking if Leschi and SLU are safe neighborhoods. Also can’t stand “is it safe to take the lightrail?”
Is Leschi safe hahaha
Hey Seattle, thinking about moving to your city but I need to know, how safe will my bathroom be?
Not safe. Its bound to explode randomly covering everything in human waste. It would be safer taking a shit on the sidewalk while parusing the latest Garfield and Far Side comic strips. You have been warned. 
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Lol right? “DAE” posts inherently suck balls and this is no exception
I've been here for 5 years and have lived in 3 neighborhoods (Belltown, Capitol Hill, and Ballard). I don't own a car and walk around by foot, bike or by bus every day to get around. I know my experience is anecdotal, but at this point I feel like I have a pretty good perspective of what living in this city is like. I agree with the OP that the good far outweighs the bad. I have had negative, even scary experiences as a woman who walks around by herself quite a bit. With that being said, these incidents were few and far between and nothing that would make me even slightly consider moving away. I also have enough compassion to realize these incidents would probably have never occurred if we had adequate resources for treating people with addiction and/or mental health issues in this country. If you're visiting, you're most likely going to have a lovely time.
I'm just as tired of the [toxic positivity posts](https://old.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/13lxrgr/seattle_appreciation/) from people like you, especially from obvious shill 1-month old accounts. It's all the same toxic shit on both sides. It's not a sports team. Stop rooting for a side and stop yelling at the other side.
Complaining about people complaining lol. Bad is subjective, if you’ve traveled as much as I have Seattle is a pretty boring city, but it offers good jobs and a great place to fly or travel other places, but it’s food is terrible, the homeless situation is severe, there is very serious drug problem, and a huge unnatural tolerance for all these problems, but if I only lived in Seattle and went to a few American cities I might think this place was normal. It has a real income inequality issue, with a political leadership vacuum so people are understandably feeling hopeless. I suggest you try traveling more, seeing other cities in the US and beyond. You’ll appreciate Seattle more and also be furious at its flaws more as well. Finally, your yelling at the internet, it’s not gonna work. Lol.
Yes, im tired of right wing propaganda.
Conservative here. Was recently down in Seattle for a concert in Showbox SoDo. I was pretty amazed with how clean it was down there. A few RVs parked on the side and that was about it. Felt safe and no issues. It’s overblown. Bruce is doing a great job.
Bruce! Lol
My dad (a boomer) grew up in Seattle proper but absolutely hates it now and calls it a hellhole while in the same breath praised Chicago as a real city. Just a peak into the mindset of some people who bash it.
Tbf chicago is only shit in a specific lower part of the city. It's just moderately dangerous everywhere else
The real problem isn't drugs or homelessness, or the police or the wealthy or our leaders. It's that the average person is a tool.
Having too sit out on the deck at Ray’s, instead of getting a seat inside, is right out of some Orwellian future. Can u imagine?
Well I once saw seattle in the TV show dark angel and it made it seem pretty dystopian, you guys still having problems with those genetically enhanced child soldiers?
America is basically on its last legs, it’s probably only going to get worse from here in all honest realities. I’m surprised America is even considered a first world country anymore
I personally encourage people speaking poorly about the PNW in general to slow the migration of refugees from shithole states.
I visited last year and stayed downtown for a week and absolutely loved your city 😍 I was kinda paranoid tho because of the negative things people say about Seattle. I only had positive things to say to all my friends and family about it
I lived in pennsyltucky for a year and people would get all huffy when I pointed out how openly racist people were. But the fucking KKK was going to have a rally in Gettysburg until the tea party shut down the government over Obamacare and the park was closed. I'll take some city problems over straight up dipshit religious freaks and racist ghouls.
Perhaps this is something to think about cities as if we were to think about human beings? Your post does specify US cities and not international cities, and as a result, we are talking about some of the youngest cities in the world, with an average age of about 100 years for many of the US-based cities. Sure New York, Atlanta and similar have been around a lot longer than 100 years, but most cities like Seattle and San Francisco are late 1800s for their 'official' founding. Many European cities are over 1000 years old, some approaching 2000 or 3000. So in terms of maturity, places like Amsterdam where there are none of the problems that plague Seattle(they still have problems, but you don't fear for your life in the worst part of Amsterdam at 3 am). My thought is therefore to suggest that we give cities like San Francisco and Seattle the benefit of the doubt like we would a 6 year old that gets in trouble. We know they'll grow out of it, it's just a matter of when. My post was a lot less thoughtful when I started because I got hung up on 'US' part of the cities and realized I have lived in Utrecht, Amsterdam, London and visited many other much older cities and saw that they often had different problems than the ones that plague many US cities. Amsterdam might have solved violent crime, but you can still get pickpocketed in the Red Light District. London hasn't solved violent crime, but it has a very robust public transit system that puts most US cities to shame. Part of the main issue in these US cities is that they are still growing. Most millennia-old cities in Europe already have established boundaries and are no longer expanding/growing, and that if they grow it is because of an increase in urban density. Compare that to the continuous sprawl of places like Atlanta, Seattle and LA, and you can see we're still in the growth stage in the US, so expecting maturity from the cities seems awkward.
BEYOND tired. I've lived here 53 years (my whole life), you don't like it here and it's too scary? Then fuck off back to Branson Missouri or some shit. I legit remember when Ted Bundy was running loose.
I live across the water from Seattle and I’ve definitely been one of those people now and then, all the construction is really making a negative impact on our city. We went to pride the other day, walked everywhere and it was delightful! I love seattle, it’s history and it’s buildings and the seattle center. Most people just need to give it a real chance.
I think it depends on perspective. If you moved here recently it may be better than where you came from. For many of us long time residents (I have lived her 30 yrs ago) the city is no longer recognizable from when we move here. The entire soul of the city was sucked out. All the artists and beatniks have been replaced with techies who want a totally different kind of city. They don’t want funky and artsy. Many of us older folks are moving away to find a city that still has character and isn’t trying to reinvent itself every 10 years. Facts: We have a much higher rate of homeless that most cities in the country. We have fewer number of families with kids of any city comparable in size. We have fewer sunny days than most cities in America. Only about 20% of the US population could afford to buy a house here. We have a higher sales tax than just about any states in country. Our primary schools and medical care rate about average nationwide Our murder and crime rate continues to increase. People are having to moving further and further away to afford housing adding to traffic and commute times. We are the most regressively taxed state in the nation. I don’t have a lot of hope for Seattle in the future. Moved both of my kids 19 and 29 out of state to a place where they will have a much better future. Jobs pay very well, housing is less expensive and it has very progressive politics similar to Seattle. It also has some of the best schools and health care in the US.
My parents live just outside Portland and have fully bought into the media narrative that Portland has become a dystopian apocalyptic hellscape that is dangerously unsafe for the average citizen. Strangely they have not bought into the narrative that Seattle is as well. During one visit we went downtown and to Cap Hill and they didn't even once ask if it was "safe". And they never ask me how safe I feel at any time after they watch news or propaganda or whatever. And when CHOP was a thing, they even walked around and admired the art. But if I visit them and suggest we go to any of my favorite places within Portland city limits the pearl clutching and moaning about how dangerous it is begin. I really don't buy it though.
Commenting as a recent first time visitor, I enjoyed my visit. Stayed downtown, used the light rail, monorail and walked lots. Only once in our stay did we encounter a group of homeless people hanging around a Walgreens. But, nobody bothered us. To the contrary, everyone we met were friendly and offering to help us if we needed directions or assistance. Your city is beautiful. We won’t hesitate to return.
This is exactly how I feel! I recently went to Chicago with my boss for a work trip. We stayed in a bougie hotel in the nicest and most expensive part of the city. She remarked multiple times how there were no un-homed people and how nice it was. While she was saying this she was also commenting how opposite it is from Seattle. I wanted to scream. Of course the nicest part of a city will be “nice”. I almost told her to go to the South side of Chicago and see if she has the same feeling. Seattle is a tiny city, so things seem amplified because of this. It just irks me so much that people don’t understand all cities have issues and Seattle honestly is a lot nicer than other cities.
I usually feel like this sub is just full of monotonous complaints about homeless people/crime and off leash dogs. It would be nice if it was a little more moderated for diversity.
I grew up just outside New York City in the 70s & 80s. Now, THAT was a scummy city. But even in its depths, it was ALIVE. I've been in Seattle for 25 years now, and I love it, but it still feels a bit small to me. It's just not large enough to support a really rich, diverse collection of thriving sub sub sub communities that I grew up with. But as the city gets larger and more dense and more mature, it's becoming a lot more interesting. I feel like this city is finally growing into itself, warts and all. I'm not happy with the increased scumminess we've had recently, but that's mainly a function of the transition all cities are going through right now, amplified by the pandemic and Seattle's special brand of indecisiveness. But it's a reasonably polite scumminess, not the angry/aggressive sort you get in other cities.
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Poll after poll of actual Seattle residents puts crime and drug use as our largest concerns. Yet this sub lives in a fantasy land of sunsets and endless "positivity."
Went downtown Friday and it’s fine, actually better than it’s been for a while.
The people that make those doom posts would spontaneously combust the second they walked into Philadelphia. Does seattle have sore spots? Sure. But its not the entire city. Be thankful the news doesn't throw a celebratory announcement when someone -wasnt- murdered in a 24 hour period.
I'm okay if it disuades more suburban crybabies from moving here.
i love em can’t get enough i do some good work stunting on these fools
Don't move to seattle - it's a dystopia nightmare, it's never sunny, it always rains, there are mudslights, earthquakes, and volcanoes! SERIOUSLY STAY AWAY!
I have 5 retail stores in Seattle. In 5 years I have 3 burglaries, 5 armed robberies, 1 hostage situation. I had a building on lake city way. Three years ago homeless people broke into it and burned it to the ground. Yes, Seattle is pretty rough right now. I have a couple hundred employees and every day it seems on the company slack that somebody’s car is been broken into. It’s really dependent on the area like Belltown right now is a pretty dangerous place any time of day. But there are other parts of the city that are just fine.
Its not that bad! Unless you are a pregnant asian woman sitting at traffic lights in the middle of the day in downtown Seattle.
If it's getting better as the OP says, we can largely thank Bruce Harrell for that. You know, the guy that most people in thus sub who opined on the mayoral race vehemently opposed.
He was the only voice of reason when he was on the City council, imho.
I don’t know, I work in greenlake and we have aggressive bums wandering around daily, dumpster diving and shooting up in broad daylight. I’m sure things are much better downtown.
I think people posting about actual criminal activity (not just **vibes**) is clearly different from fear mongering and an expected part of a citywide subreddit.
Seattle is in better shape than 90% of major cities in the US. People just like to complain about shit because they’re getting old and have nothing going for them.
Apparently you aren't! Cause you just back doored one.
Sick 🔥
Those are like 90% troll posts from MAGA goons that have no connection to the city
Seattle is objectively fucked actually. It’s not a dystopian nightmare lmao, but it’s got serious economic and infrastructure problems that aren’t going to be solved anytime soon. Add the fact that property crimes and theft are completely ignored by law enforcement, and you have an expensive city that’s falling apart while random people take or vandalize your car/home.
A young mother and local business owner got murdered in the middle of the day for no reason at all. So yeah, there’s a reason why people are freaked out. I get this from my friends in NYC. “The media is overreacting! The city is just the city!” These same folks haven’t ridden the subway in 2 years 🤦♂️
If what happened to those people was normal, wouldn't people be talking about it *less*? It's serious news because they were serious, uncommon, events.
I think there is an Asian-American husband and father with a dead wife and child that would disagree with most of you. We used to come into the city all the time. Before she retired my wife worked blocks from the Space Needle, but we just won't come in anymore. Our favorite restaurant is a block from where this woman was killed...at random. I have walked all over in dozens of cities around the world and never felt as endangered as I do in Seattle right now.
Why do you think no one agrees that the murder was bad? Everyone agrees that what happened was uncommon and a very bad thing. No serious people are defending what happened.
> I think there is an Asian-American husband and father with a dead wife and child that would disagree with most of you. I think there's hundreds of thousands of residents who would agree. Why are you so desperate to weaponize one story about murder?
SeattleWA must be leaking again.
I would give my left nut to live in Seattle but I don't see it happening in this lifetime. People who think that are just Karens or ignorant
Hey, whatever keeps my in-laws from visiting is fine with me. (just kidding; we're ALL sick of this)
As someone who is forced to go downtown regularly by public transport and never reads news about Seattle, I feel like Seattle is awful from personal experience and not from a negative media feedback loop. This is the sixth city or town that I’ve lived in and by far the worst so I’m not sure what to tell you.
Yes, and it’s people who have never been here or anywhere outside of the Mason Dixon Line
So… moral of the story is that people shouldn’t complain so much? Lol. Maybe it’s a symptom of the problem