Tag Archives: Seattle’s homelessness crisis

Seattle Clown Councilmember believes "inclusive" Ping-Pong tables will help deter crime

Posted on June 23, 2018 by | Leave a comment

king county courthouse homeless seattle times photo

The homeless situation just by the courthouse/Seattle Times photo


You cannot make this stuff up.
About this council member, Sally Bagshaw:

  • Served on the council since 2009
  • Prior to that, she served eight years as Chief Civil Deputy Prosecutor of the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office
  • Began her legal career as an Assistant Attorney General after graduating from Stanford University and the University of Idaho Law School
  • Has also served as business and finance lawyer for both Washington State University and University of Washington

From MyNorthwest.com (by Jason Rantz): The area surrounding the King County Courthouse in downtown Seattle is dangerous. Crime is rampant. Homelessness is out of control.
It’s not safe to visit as a juror. It’s not safe to work in the buildings nearby. You can’t even walk around the neighborhood without olfactory offenses, human waste everywhere.
The solution? Ping-Pong!
Seattle City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw says that she’d like to bring a host of amenities to the area as an “inclusive” way to make the area safer. She’d like to see Ping-Pong tables, seating, and food trucks come to the area.
“This could be a place where we bring tables and chairs like we did at Westlake and Occidental,” Bagshaw told KING 5. “When there are places to be, and there’s food, and they can sit, then [the park] gets activated and there’s space for everybody.”
There doesn’t yet seem to be much support for the idea, certainly not from people most familiar with the area. “Playing Ping-Pong isn’t any more of a diversion than placing Volleyball nets up,” one Seattle police officer told me.
Indeed, this area has seen a remarkable amount of a crime. Former King County Sheriff John Urquhart was confronted by a homeless man with a knife. Things got so bad several months ago — with jurors and a half dozen courthouse employees being assaulted — that two judges spoke out.
Crime aside, the area smells of human feces and urine. Take a stroll through the blocks surrounding the courthouse and you’re likely to see someone using the nearby park or a random sidewalk as a toilet. Could you imagine eating a grilled cheese from a nearby food truck in a neighborhood like this?
Bagshaw says other nearby areas have benefited from the amenities she’s talking about. She points to Occidental Park, which has seen a decrease in the types of behavior we experience near the courthouse. She’s right, we have, but the context is so remarkably different. It makes a comparison a bit disingenuous because, she claims, her move wouldn’t displace the homeless folks who are near the courthouse for services.
Occidental Park is surrounded by businesses catering to tens of thousands of people visiting the area for Sounders, Seahawks, and Mariners games. During game days, they absolutely displace the homelessness population. And they don’t have to be there for access to services. The courthouse? They need to be in that spot for access to the services provided. And does Bagshaw realize many of the people who are living on the street and committing these acts of violence are living with an untreated mental illness or addiction? Access to a Ping-Pong table won’t stop them from acting out; treatment would.
Perhaps — and stay with me here as I’m about to unveil a radical and controversial idea — we continue to increase police presence and — wait for it — enforce the law.
People feel inherently unsafe when you let crime and homelessness envelop a neighborhood. Perhaps the council should give officers the green light to actually do their job and we can, for once, stop the shouts for affordable housing and, instead, call for treatment on demand? No, it’s not as fun as Ping-Pong, but it might actually save lives.
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DCG

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Rape, strangulation and assault: Three attacks by homeless people in Seattle in less than a month

Posted on June 20, 2018 by | 22 comments

The homeless situation in Seattle/Q13Fox photo

In November 2015 the former mayor of Seattle, homosexual Ed Murray, declared a state of emergency in Seattle due to the homelessness situation. At that time, there was an estimated 10,000 people living on the streets. Fast-forward to May 2018 and the number of homeless people has increased to over 12,100.

The city has a very lax policy in allowing the homeless to commit drug offenses. The homeless openly use and drug dealers are frequently spotted at homeless hangouts. The city even allows drug use at some homeless shelters.

Now the homeless have become more brazen with their criminal activities. No amount of tax payer dollars is going to solve the problem until Seattle officials stop coddling these individuals.

From MyNorthwest.com: Police report there’s been another assault from a man, believed to be homeless, against innocent passers-by, this time a father and his daughter walking to the Cinerama in Belltown on Father’s Day.

The unidentified victims were on their way to a screening of “The Incredibles 2” when the suspect, David Ailep, allegedly followed the pair as they walked down the sidewalk. When the female victim tried to walk away from Ailep, he said to her “why are you laughing at me” and “stop laughing at me.” She wasn’t laughing at him.

According to the police report, obtained by KTTH 770 AM, she asked Ailep to get away from her, but he refused:

“She observed that Ailep had his right hand in his pocket (she noted that it looked like was holding a knife in his hand covered by his jacket pocket) and his left hand was up and back in a striking position like he was going to hit her,” the report says. “She feared that he was going to strike her, and she decided to pull out her ASP baton from her purse to defend herself.”

The female victim screamed at him to get away from her, but he refused, grabbing both of her arms, and rattling her back and forth until he was able to take the baton from her, according to the police documents. She yelled out in pain.

At this point, her father became aware of the assault and jumped into help, tackling Ailep to the ground. While on the ground, according to the police report, Ailep swung the baton at the father, hitting him “directly on the forehead” leaving a “visible swollen laceration” from the baton strike.

After police arrived in the area of the 9-1-1 call, they spotted a suspect matching Ailep’s description. When the two officers attempted to make contact with Ailep, he sprinted away on foot and, “without any instruction given to him,” laid on the ground to be detained.

One of the officers observed Ailep to be under the influence of drugs. He said Ailep had a difficult time staying focused, and appeared frantic and “in a complete stand of delusion or delirium.”

During the interview, he made random statements to the officer like “what’s in your sink man” and “I take showers.” He repeated random statements like “easy” and “twelve, thirteen, twenty-two.” The police report claims he “appeared to be suffering from the effects of a powerful psychedelic and or stimulant narcotic…” and claimed he performed oral sex for drugs. While he claimed his pockets were empty, a search found a folding knife, a cell phone, and a wallet that didn’t belong to him.

After his arrest for felony assault and theft, a King County Intake nurse advised Ailep was not suffering from mental illness but was “extremely intoxicated” from a stimulant narcotic. While the Seattle Police Department hasn’t confirmed Ailep is homeless, a source suggested they believe him to be.

This is the third high-profile homeless attack on a passerby in the last several weeks, with a rape in Ballard and a strangling of a tourist near the Space Needle occurring within weeks of each other. These incidents are occurring as Mayor Jenny Durkan asks for community support to place tiny home villages in residential neighborhoods. The South Lake Union village may be low barrier, which would allow someone like Ailep the ability to keep his drugs in his home.

DCG

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Seattle Council votes to repeal new business head tax just weeks after they approved it

Posted on June 13, 2018 by | Leave a comment

re elections meme
Did you know seven of the nine Seattle City Council members’ terms expire next year?
In early May the Seattle City Council approved a new business head tax to combat the homelessness crisis. From my post:
“The tax is an amount businesses pay per employee ($275 per year), with a sunset clause of 2023. The head tax was approved by a unanimous vote.”
The main target of this new business tax was Amazon, which was not pleased with the tax. “Amazon had strong words for the Seattle City Council as it questions its future in the city. “We are disappointed by today’s City Council decision to introduce a tax on jobs,” Amazon Vice President Drew Herdener said in a statement.”
Immediately after the tax passed, a group calling themselves “No Tax on Jobs” gathered enough signatures to put the matter on the November ballot and let the voters decide. They needed 17,000 signatures by June 14 and surpassed that amount.
On Monday, Council President Bruce Harrell announced that he had called a special meeting for the council to discuss repealing the head tax. (Harrell’s term expires next year.) They already had a draft bill prepared for the repeal.
Mayor Jenny Durkan issued a statement regarding the consideration of the repeal. Excerpts from her statement:
“Over the last few weeks, these conversations and much public dialogue has continued.  It is clear that the ordinance will lead to a prolonged, expensive political fight over the next five months that will do nothing to tackle our urgent housing and homelessness crisis. These challenges can only be addressed together as a city, and as importantly, as a state and a region. 
We heard you. This week, the City Council is moving forward with the consideration of legislation to repeal the current tax on large businesses to address the homelessness crisis.”
Less than a month later the council has voted to repeal the head tax.
The council yesterday repealed the head tax by a vote of 7 to 2. More details from MyNorthwest.com:
“Seattle Councilmember Lisa Herbold said the opposition to the tax was just too great. The opposition, she said, has “unlimited resources.”
Teresa Mosqueda, one of two council members to vote against a repeal, said she is concerned that a repeal will result in months of inaction and more regressive taxes. The process to implement a head tax took months, she pointed out. And, if the city wants to continue getting people off the streets, it will need additional funding. She called on businesses who opposed the head tax to come to the table with progressive ideas.
Numerous people in support of the head tax expressed similar concerns as (socialist) Councilmember Sawant, who accused her peers of making a last-minute decision and “caving” to Amazon. “Backroom betrayal” and “caving” were thrown around frequently.
“Jeff Bezos is our enemy, he is our enemy,” Sawant said before the council voted.”
Read the whole story here.
I can’t believe the Seattle citizens are putting up with this clown council with a socialist member who is calling the owner of one of their largest employers an “enemy” in a public forum.
Yet I gather from the comments on this article and also at the Seattle Times that some proggies in Seattle are finally waking up to the madness they elected as the majority have had it with the council members. Next year’s re-election cycle is bound to be a hoot.
DCG
PS: Jason Rantz from KTTH Radio tweeted from the repeal meeting (see his Twitter timeline here). A bunch of socialists/proggies were there to support the crazy council member Kshama Sawant. A few of Jason’s tweets:

  • “Lunatic just claimed the Council is pushing “the Trump agenda.”
  • “Priest is mad that Christians don’t ideologically agree with him and now claims you can’t call yourself a Christian if you support capitalism. This guy is a lunatic.”
  • “Sawant activists in the crowd shouting down speakers whom they disagree with. But remember: they’re fighting fascism or something.”
  • “We’re done with Trump tactics,” said one lunatic at the meeting.”
  • “Crazy women being removed by security now but because she’s a Progressive activist, the crowd doesn’t mind and she’s getting a pass from the crowd.”
  • “Socialists think the couple hundred of them that worked to pass the Seattle head tax is more important than the 45k who signed on to repeal the . They don’t know how numbers works: it’s why they’re Socialists.”
  • “Sawant said she’s now talking as an economist and some in the crowd just laughed at her. Loudly. That annoyed her.”
  • “CM Sawant – “I’m speaking as an economist….” People in chambers break out in laughter….”

Sounds like the meeting was a whole lotta crazy!!

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Seattle to help the homeless safely inject drugs with medical mobile unit

Posted on June 10, 2018 by | 36 comments

mobile medical unit

King County’s medical mobile unit


Seattle’s homeless crisis is exacerbated by the fact that the local area politicians and government officials believe that enabling an addiction is part of the solution.
Taxpayers are coughing up MILLIONS of dollars to provide assistance to those in need. Yet many of the homeless don’t want help any help.
The inhabitant of the “tent mansion” near Seattle Center has refused help from the city, choosing instead to live on the street, than follow the rules of a shelter. She said, “We don’t want to change our lifestyle to fit their requirements. We intend to stay here. This is the solution to the homeless problem. We want autonomy, right here.”
The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office recently offered to help the homeless at an encampment. They brought in agencies to offer services and help with drug addiction. Out of the 50 campers there only one accepted the assistance.
King County already offers medical mobile units.
Yet Seattle, which recently approved a business “head tax” to solve their homeless crisis, is going ahead with their medical mobile unit. Guess they have to spend their recently-acquired taxpayer dollars somewhere.
From MyNorthwest.com: Seattle council members are looking to get around the dilemma of where to place a safe injection site by making it mobile. The city is now exploring what Human Services Department spokesperson Meg Olberding describes as a “large mobile medical van.”
The van would be akin to the medical RVs the county and city currently use to serve homeless residents. KIRO 7 reports that they will be much larger, however.  The option is referred to as “fixed-mobile.” A medical van would park at a fixed location, but return to a secure location every night.
“It is an option where we would actually lease or go into an agreement regarding a fixed site, and then with that, we would have a mobile van,” said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, Health Officer for Public Health Seattle-King County. “… this is potentially a very large vehicle that we would then house the consumption activity in.”
The mobile van would offer consumption booths and recovery space. According to Q13, the safe injection van would cost about $350,000; along with $1.8 million to get the van set up, and $2.5 million to operate it. Seattle has already set aside some money for a safe injection program and the van could be paid for from those funds.
“Obviously, there will continue to be concerns about the neighborhood, security of the neighborhood, about other activities happening in the neighborhood, so we would want to make sure we provide a safe area, not only for the neighbors but for the individuals who are using as well,” Duchin told the council.
The mobile option faces a similar issue that a fixed site does — where to park it. One thing is clear, the council doesn’t want to wait much longer. Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda said that she favors purchasing a van. The city would then conduct community outreach for potential locations.
“Every day we don’t move forward, people are at risk for overdose and death, so with that in mind and with this sense of urgency for the third time this year alone that you have heard us express this, I am calling on our mayor and our county as a whole to act with urgency so we can move forward this year,” Mosqueda said. “We have the resources in hand; we have the support from the broad public, and we have data-driven solutions.”
(I have researched the validity of safe injection sites and there is a very mixed reaction as to whether or not they work. One can easily choose the data that supporst their opinion.)
“This is a data-driven, public health harm reduction model that is proven to be effective at saving lives and getting people into treatment,” she said.
The city will spend the next two months considering potential locations to park the van (so much for that “sense of urgency”). Officials favor a private lot, and note that most drug activity happens around SoDo, downtown, and the west side of Capital Hill, according to KIRO 7. The city did consider buying property specifically for the van, but found that it was “cost restrictive” inside Seattle.
Read the whole story here.

Enslaving drug users only perpetuates the cycle. And it keeps the taxpayer money flowing to develop more “solutions.”
DCG

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Seattle has a solution to their homelessness crisis: A 75-person task force

Posted on January 25, 2018 by | Leave a comment

government solve all problems
The city of Seattle has a major homelessness problem. It’s so bad that the former disgraced homosexual mayor, Ed Murray, declared a State of Emergency on November 2, 2015. From my blog post in April 2017:
“In 2016, the King County region saw an increase of 19% of our unsheltered population, the majority of those people residing in Seattle. In November of 2015, Mayor Murray declared a State of Emergency on Homelessness to bring light to this crisis and seek greater support from our state and federal partners. Mayor Murray has increased spending on homelessness intervention and prevention and the City of Seattle is now spending a record high of nearly $50 million dollars to address this crisis.”
The city has spent a lot of tax payer money to try and solve the problem. Here’s an example of what they’ve done to date:

Three years after the State of Emergency was declared and after all the hires and money spent, homelessness is still a major issue in the city.
The solution now? Form a large task force which, no doubt, will recommend more new taxes.
Jonathan Martin at the Seattle Times reports on the details of this new task force:
The number of people in King County who left homelessness for permanent housing has nearly doubled since 2012, but the overall tally of people who became homeless has risen more steeply — to nearly 30,000 in 2016.
That data, from King County, framed the launch on Monday of a sprawling new regional task force on homelessness to stop the descent of many into abject poverty. The 75-member group, called One Table, is the first evidence of regional collaboration between new Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and King County Executive Dow Constantine on the homelessness crisis.
The mission of the task force remains fuzzy — with a stated goal of finding solutions to “root causes,” including a lack of affordable housing and gaps in the behavioral health, criminal justice and child welfare systems that jettison people directly into homelessness.
At a news conference after the first meeting, Constantine said the task force was in response to a city property tax proposed, then withdrawn, last year by former Seattle Mayor Ed Murray for homeless services.
One Table, co-chaired by Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus, includes leaders from a business community that has objected to a rising tax level. But Constantine suggested its recommendations could include new taxes for homelessness prevention.
“We’re spending a lot of money now on crisis response (to homelessness), but on the prevention side, on the root causes, there is clearly still a gap in the resources available,” he said.
Durkan sounded less enthusiastic. “We can’t reverse engineer this — it’s not the taxes first, and then do the services that fit the taxes,” she said. “Let’s find the solutions, then scope the resource to fill that gap.”
Read the rest of the details here.
DCG

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Utopia will be achieved: Seattle awards $34M to 30 agencies to end homelessness

Posted on November 29, 2017 by | Leave a comment

seattle homelessness

Tax dollars required to end homelessness…


In a previous post, I told you about Seattle’s serious homelessness problem. From my post:
“In 2016, the King County region saw an increase of 19% of our unsheltered population, the majority of those people residing in Seattle. In November of 2015, Mayor Murray declared a State of Emergency on Homelessness to bring light to this crisis and seek greater support from our state and federal partners. Mayor Murray has increased spending on homelessness intervention and prevention and the City of Seattle is now spending a record high of nearly $50 million dollars to address this crisis.”
The city hired a “Director of Homelessness” to ensure that the City’s increased efforts were well coordinated and driving toward the greatest outcomes for those in need. The new Director of Homelessness was tasked with executing the Mayor’s priorities on this issue. In August 2016, the city hired George Scarola to fill this position, who makes $137,500 per year.
In 2016, the Human Services Division invested $55 million in homelessness services. That large amount of tax-payer dollars didn’t solve the problem so $34 million more is needed.
From MyNorthwest.com: Calling it a fundamental shift in the City of Seattle’s approach to homelessness, Mayor Tim Burgess says the Human Services Department will fund 30 agencies to help move people into permanent housing. Those agencies plan to use the $34 million awarded to move more than twice as many people into housing next year than in 2017.
“By moving people from living on the street to permanent homes, we provide them a springboard to better opportunities and a more stable life,” said Mayor Tim Burgess. “We are focused on the only result that ends homelessness: housing. We are holding our providers accountable to that same result. I commend HSD for their focus on results and accountability for public dollars.”
The goal is to move more than 7,000 households into housing in 2018, including 739 families and 1,094 youth and young adults. (According to the HSD 2016 report, there was 6,128 exits to permanent housing throughout King County. Yet in 2017 there was another 7,000 homeless? That’s an awful lot of new homeless households in one year. The numbers just don’t make sense to me.)
The city says the awards fall into seven categories: Prevention, Diversion, Outreach and Engagement, Emergency Services, Transitional Housing, Rapid Re-Housing, and Permanent Supportive Housing.
The Human Services Department received 181 applications from 57 agencies, according to the city.
According to the city’s annual point-in-time count, 8,746 people are homeless in Seattle, and there are 3,857 unsheltered people.
DCG

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Seattle to open a new homeless shelter where drugs and alcohol are allowed

Posted on July 11, 2017 by | 16 comments

ed murray
I’ve written about the major homelessness problem that Seattle, and its homosexual mayor Ed Murray, have tried to address. The good mayor has tried to address this by:

Their latest solution to help homeless people change their circumstances? Open a $2.7 million dollar facility where one is permitted to use alcohol and drugs. I wouldn’t bet that inviting these abuses will be a successful path for homeless people.
From Seattle Times: After a siting controversy and months of delay, Seattle’s first enhanced 24-hour shelter for homeless people will open to clients Wednesday.
Inside the newly refurbished facility in the Little Saigon neighborhood are sleeping cots with blue cushions that couples can push together, offices where clients will receive supportive services, and a mess hall for meals.
Staffers at the Navigation Center will spend the next days making last-minute preparations for the opening, said Greg Jensen, a spokesman for the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), which the city has contracted to operate the facility.
About 20 homeless people already have been referred to the center by city outreach workers, Jensen said. “We anticipate that we’ll be seeing clients almost immediately,” he said.
Mayor Ed Murray put the process to develop the center in motion via a June 2016 executive order, saying that creating a shelter with services beyond those offered at traditional facilities was key to the city’s strategy.
But its development was rough going. A plan to open the center by the end of 2016 was scuttled when the city was unable to find a suitable site.
In February, city officials reached an agreement with the Seattle Indian Commission to lease the Pearl Warren building. The move displaced Operation Nightwatch, a mats-on-the-floor-style emergency shelter for homeless men that was leasing space in the building, and stirred up protest among residents of the surrounding community.
Advocates with neighborhood group Friends of Little Saigon continue to push back against the city, saying that the decision to site the center on the edge of the city’s Chinatown International District was reached without hearing views from local residents.
“There are many in the community who still don’t want it, but we know it’s going to open anyway,” said Quynh Pham, spokeswoman for Friends of Little Saigon. “At this point, we just want to have the city address concerns about this model and how the center will be run.”
City officials are betting that the center, with restrictions on entry eased and intensive services available, will become an asset for moving people indoors and out of conditions that are unsanitary and sometimes unsafe. People living in unauthorized tent encampments will initially be given top priority, officials said.
”It will allow us to reach those who are in the community of homeless people who have not been getting robust services,” said DESC director Dan Malone.
Modeled after a similar shelter in San Francisco’s Mission District, the center features laundry and storage facilities, showers and enough dormitory space to provide beds to about 75 people.
Unlike more restrictive shelters, clients will be able to store their belongings, bring along their pets and partners, and come and go when they like. While discouraged, drug and alcohol use inside the facility will be allowed unless it disturbs other clients or the surrounding community.
Once there, people who might have been unwilling or unable to take advantage of other shelter options will be pointed toward mental-health, addiction and housing services based on their needs, officials said.
How successful the center might be in moving people into permanent housing remains an open question. Similar shelters in San Francisco, which is experiencing its own crisis over affordable housing and visible homelessness, may serve as a rough guide.
Read the rest of the article here.
DCG

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