Seattle is dying

[PNWbrit]

I think it's a bit easier to get righteous about nimbyism when you live in a suburb and it doesn't affect your immediate home. I had a suspicion you didn't live in the city and I was right.

Comparing Issaquah to Seattle...really?

Wasn't comparing. Just saying, again, that it's a bigger problem than just Seattle.

And I wasn't getting righteous.

[frorider]

who gives a shit about zoning? call it a "free airbnb".
.

Holy disruptive genius Batman! Privatize this thing via air bnb type mgmt, subsidize via private and public funding, and Bam we’ll have tons of beds. And corporate lawyers steamrolling the NIMBY lawyers.

[DaveTV]

Holy disruptive genius Batman! Privatize this thing via air bnb type mgmt, subsidize via private and public funding, and Bam we’ll have tons of beds. And corporate lawyers steamrolling the NIMBY lawyers.

Did you watch the video? I saw another smaller video from another local news channel that interviewed a guy involved with the dismantling a camp of a hundred or so. They had temp housing available for all. Only 3 people took it. They interviewed one of the guys who declined, he said he prefers living on his own on the street.

[KQ]

Has this been posted? A solution for affordable housing? Of course you'd still need a place to put them but it's a thought:

These 3D-printed homes can be built for less than $4,000 in just 24 hours

[shroom]

i’ve been kinda interested in working for this company to try to push a similar outcome. no idea if they’re any good or not, though. just a relevant company footprint and approach to advancement for me.

http://www.katerra.com/content/kater...he-vision.html

[MontuckyFried]

Has this been posted? A solution for affordable housing? Of course you'd still need a place to put them but it's a thought:

These 3D-printed homes can be built for less than $4,000 in just 24 hours

While that is certainly a worthy pursuit to help those are either just down and out or live in an unsustainably expensive RE market, I do not believe it's a lack of quarters that is the problem with the vast majority of the homeless. Some choose not to utilize existing shelters sometimes because of the conditions, sometimes because they themselves don't like sharing the space with some of the company there, but most often it's simply that they really don't want to be in a 'home.' I don't understand the mind of the schizophrenic or the drug addicted, but by and large the perpetually homeless are kind of making their own choice (as much as their impaired minds can) as to where they live.

I do have to admire the Houzz-looking professional photo of the 3D printed home you posted. Really cool stuff. I DEFINITELY see a worthwhile market for that. BUT if you were to just try and house your average bum(s) in those, unless a community were to have some serious oversight with strict rules, they'll just end up either going underutilized or filthy dens of drugs and squalor. And that's just it. Sure, as a society, I think it could be worthwhile to build a community for the needy, BUT not without very, very strict rules. Many have the minds of children. Do you let children exist free of rules? Of course not! They only can thrive if they have boundaries, rules, schedules, etc. Same goes for the mentally handicapped. We CAN help them. We just also have to be willing to do what needs to be done to really help them. I'd say it's pretty apparent at this point that whatever San Francisco and Seattle have been doing obviously isn't working. Their problems have only exploded in the last few years, despite billions of dollars thrown at the issue. Nobody there seems to have the balls to be strict, though. Sorry, SF, but I'm not seeing any evidence that accepting open drug use is helping anybody. Oh, but wanna smoke an e-cig? SF city council says "NOPE!, but here have a clean needle instead. Gratis!" W. T. F.?.....
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/san-fra...d-vaping-juul/
Not to derail or anything, but was watching that on their local news, right after walking through their streets full of piss, poo, and spent needles, and seriously had to question their city leadership's priorities in what they choose to crack down on. Bigger fish, SF. Bigger fish. SMH at it all.

[shroom]

Did you watch the video? I saw another smaller video from another local news channel that interviewed a guy involved with the dismantling a camp of a hundred or so. They had temp housing available for all. Only 3 people took it. They interviewed one of the guys who declined, he said he prefers living on his own on the street.

the people i interact with daily (live/work in seattle proper and use public trans) are either out there with intent, or so far gone there’s no reasoning or standard interaction. those really just struggling are probably getting help, but i don’t see that. i do see them on the corner with a sign, but that’s not too high in volume outside the tourist spots.

at the aggregate 1-2x a week i’m clenching a fist or watching someone out of the corner of my eye on the bus or on the street, and i’m not the type to be scared of the world. i’ve been yelled at for 30 minutes straight, every insult in the book, threats, by people seeing straight through me. in college one of my buddies would flirt with alcohol poising on the regular and get these crazy zombie eyes. you’ve probably seen them. that’s what these people are like. that level of mental capability. that same look.

i buy Real Change when i have cash. i vote liberal. i give the young homeless dude that lives on the street next to my place $20 once or twice a month, no way the tumors he has will give him that much more time.

my experience. i think seattle and many other cities that are growing in competitiveness are just visualizing a lot of our issues for us. we’ve never really had widespread human competition in NA, resources were heavy. in general, our societal structure lends to more a heightened competitiveness than it has in the past, and that’s exposed a lack of structural empathy as the population has become less normalized. our gov definitely has not kept up with management of such diversification, across the board, which is why i think you see a lot of liberalism in the cities.

[KQ]

i buy Real Change when i have cash.

.

I used to buy that all the time from anyone who approached me selling it. Didn't matter that I already had a stack of the same issue in my office. If they were willing to try to do something I was willing to help them out.

I also support Plymouth Housing. They do good things.

[KQ]

Security cameras unveil disturbing activities outside Seattle condo
A Seattle woman said she's had many sleepless nights after security cameras outside her condo revealed ongoing problems.

Author: Amy Moreno
Published: 11:44 PM PDT April 11, 2019
Updated: 1:01 PM PDT April 12, 2019
SEATTLE — Security cameras are becoming common at homes, but one Seattle woman said they've opened her eyes to the scary activity going on outside her condo.

Susan, who asked us not to use her last name, said the cameras are being triggered on a regular basis by people trying to break into cars. Some people are even trying to walk into her home.

She said the last few months at her Northgate condo have been exhausting.

“I would say weekly someone tries to come in,” Susan explained. “The crime has gone up. They cut through the roof of my car."

Susan said she installed cameras after they found people living in her building's fire sprinkler room. Since then, she's had many sleepless nights.

“I had some people breaking in, and when I told them I was calling the police, they turned and looked at me and laughed,” Susan said.

She has called the police multiple times and said officers do their best, but it happens so much the numbers are overwhelming and knows she’s not alone.

“You belong to this community network and people are posting something every day saying this happened to me last night, this happened to me,” Susan said.

It’s to the point she now sleeps with a baseball bat nearby and sometimes doesn't feel safe in her home.

“I love Seattle, and I love where I live, but it's just getting frustrating,” she said.

After more than a decade in the Seattle area, Susan wonders if it’s time to move on.

“I don't want to do it, and I've been trying to figure out if I can hang in there. I've been trying to get people in the community involved to figure out if we can make it a safer place to live,” Susan said.

She's hoping for a safer place and a little less traffic outside her front door.

[KQ]

Wow - these have more than the Conestogas that we have set up which have no heat/electricity or A/C

Could ‘pallet shelters’ help solve Seattle’s homeless crisis?
Seattle Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda wants the city to consider using ‘pallet shelters’ as a faster option to house the homeless. The shelters can be assembled without tools in about 30 minutes.

Author: Michael Crowe
Published: 8:38 PM PDT April 11, 2019
Updated: 8:41 PM PDT April 11, 2019

SEATTLE — Seattle Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda wants the city to consider a new option in the fight against homelessness. On Thursday, she hosted a demonstration of a “pallet shelter” outside Seattle City Hall.

The shelters are manufactured by Pallet in Everett and can be assembled without tools in 20-30 minutes. The structures can be outfitted with electricity, heat, air conditioning, and a locking door.

“We are past three years of a declared state of emergency in this city,” Mosqueda said. “We have 4,500 people who are living outside without any shelter in our region, and we have not built the housing or the shelter to the capacity we need.”

She floated the shelters as a potential temporary housing solution. One of the units demoed Thursday sells for between $3,500 and $5,500, depending on selected options. With fold-down bunk beds inside, four people can sleep in one unit.

“If we want to create stability for our community, if we want to make sure every family, worker, and individual has a place to call home, this a great first step,” Mosqueda said.

The shelters were originally built for disaster relief but are used to shelter some homeless people in Tacoma, along with a small camp in Lynnwood, Pallet CEO Amy King explained.

“We want people to have the dignity of security and safety when they sleep so they can go out and work during the day and engage in activities they need to during the day,” King said.

Six of the pallet shelters are currently in use at a small homeless camp behind Good Shepherd Baptist Church in Lynnwood. The Jean Kim Foundation sponsors the camp. Residents there moved into the pallets shelters from tents in November.

“Tents are limited, you could really on sleep in them,” said Jason Dunbar, the services coordinator for the foundation. “But now, inside each unit is a bed, a desk, and some shelves to store their stuff.”

Five of the structures at the Lynnwood camp are currently occupied. Dunbar noted that this is not a low-barrier housing situation. He believes the strict oversight of the camp has contributed to their success. Residents there are enrolled in college courses and are not allowed to have visitors.

“It’s better than being unhoused at all, sleeping in a doorway, running from the police, hiding,” Dunbar said. “It’s very stable here.”

“These are working, absolutely,” he said.

Tadesa Ensslin lives in one of the pallet shelters and said it was life-changing.

“Get back on your feet, that’s what I’m trying to do,” she said.

She’s now studying to be a nurse’s assistant or caregiver.

“It’s working for me, working out great,” Ensslin said. “Every day is step by step. That’s why I’m here.”

The goal of the camp is to be temporary. That’s what Mosqueda hoped Seattle would consider, in conjunction with services.

"One of the things I think is important is that we keep out eyes on the prize in terms of creating affordable housing. In the meantime, we have got to think of every creative solution to get folks inside,” she said.

Mosqueda said she hopes to study the pallet shelters used in Tacoma as well to learn more about how such a camp might work in Seattle. She floated the idea of utilizing unoccupied parking lots or land and hopes the city council could consider budgeting for such an effort in the coming months, without pulling money from existing services.

She noted it could be similar to an enhanced shelter, coupled with access to hygiene and services.

"This is a successful model that I know we can replicate in Seattle," she said.

[KQ]

i’d like to recommend Mercer Island for sue.

Lived there for many years. Great place. Nicely situated between Seattle & Bellevue yet you felt miles away.

[natty dread]

I live right in the epicenter of PDX's homeless problem (SE Industrial District). From my point of view, most of the people I see on the streets now are not the down on their luck kind of crowd, but are mostly hard-core addicts. It's going to take a while to come back from the mess we're in, but at least the Purdue family is finally being held accountable for largely facilitating the opioid crisis.

I would like to see several things happen to get us out of the homelessness crisis. Firstly, legalize heroin and make it so addicts can get weaned off of it under a doctor's supervision like has been done very successfully in Switzerland. Secondly, integrate the homelessness problem with the Green New Deal and infrastructure initiatives; make it so there is a place that people can go everyday and have a short-term/mid-term living wage job with almost no exceptions. Optional temporary housing as part of this program would make sense. If people don't want to work, or can't for whatever reason, give them some additional options including free temporary housing, mental healthcare, etc. Once these options are in place, toughen up on tents/sidewalk living within city limits. You don't want to go to a job? You can go to rehab or mental healthcare facility. You don't want to go to one of those, you can keep camping on the streets, but after 3 strikes or whatever, you go to jail. Rinse repeat. Finally, we need to nuke single family zoning restrictions. Portland/Oregon is already getting going on this, but our antiquated zoning laws are largely responsible for the lack of affordable housing. All the boomers that complain about homelessness, but have gotten rich by doing nothing but but watching the price of their close-in houses go up insanely can get fucked.

How are we going to pay for this? We can start with drastic cuts to the military budget. Anyone who honestly believes we need to spend close to a trillion dollars a year on our military is an asshole. Secondly, we can reverse the bullshit Trump tax cuts. Let's be real here, Bezos could singlehandedly end Seattle's homeless problem if he wanted to. Nobody needs 100 billion dollars.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using TGR Forums mobile app

I agree with all of this and I work in downtown pdx.^
But it will never happen. First the cost. Second our incompetent city council, especially the hardesty/eudaly/fritz cabal. 3rd is our atypical for bigger cities weak mayor form of government--nothing gets done, especially because the cabal has to agree. 4th the homeless "nonprofit" industry.
We have spent about a billion total on the homeless issue and we have more camps than ever.

Charlie Hales rolled out the red carpet for the homeless when he allowed street camping using a "housing emergency" as cover. The rule was camps had to be dismantled by 7 am. Never happened. And city hall told the cops not to enforce it. Hence tents everywhere, all the time.

And garbage, 2.6 million pounds of it in 2017. And shit; in '17 the city picked up 8400 gallons of human waste. And hypodermic needles : 350,000 of those the same year. all at the cost of $3.6 million/year. Tax dollars.
And then there are the fires they cause. And the assaults.
It's a crisis in portland. Millions of dollars of repair/mediation work from homeless camps (hazmat scenes really) still needs to be done to natural areas alone.

The city is overwhelmed. Police and parks are understaffed and there are about 450 complaints a week about the homeless; of course the city can only address a fraction.
Someone needs to lead.

The OR legislature is now holding hearings on removing single family zoning restrictions statewide.

[Buster Highmen]

!

[natty dread]

Hello good sir.

[Buster Highmen]

I hope all is well with you and yours down stumptown way.

Looks like # 1 son may be living down in SE off Woodstock in a year and a half. I'll fire a flare o'er your bow for drinks.

[shroom]

wording another way, i don’t think seattle is dying, i think the US is, and some places hide that better than others

[KQ]

!

!! Indeed!

[natty dread]

All is well brother and I'll keep an eye toward the bow from the mizzenmast.
Pass at whiteh2o the last 2 years!
Hallo KQ!

[KQ]

All is well brother and I'll keep an eye toward the bow from the mizzenmast.
Pass at whiteh2o the last 2 years!
Hallo KQ!

Whoo boy - been a long time since that kegger at The Dorks! Since then it's been nothing but missed connections in Whistler and Hood River.

Let me know if you ever get up to W2. Would love to see you (you too Buster).

[ill-advised strategy]

wording another way, i don’t think seattle is dying, i think the US is, and some places hide that better than others

Yes...and frustratingly, places that are hostile and dangerous toward the indigent force them to more humane environments, then harp about all the problems in those more humane places, as if those places weren’t graciously undertaking the whole country’s burden.
It would be like if some asshole beat up his kids for making the yard a mess, so the kids went and stayed with a nice neighbor next door....and then wife-beater is bragging about his nice yard and look at that shithole yard next door—as if there’s no history or backstory, as if being nice created the problem next door and his shitty behavior solved it. It’s just fucking retarded, straight-up.


I tend to think we should insist on a humane baseline everywhere. I think we’d cultivate a more creative, more dynamic, healthier culture if we worked on ensuring there’s a reasonable floor for those who don’t make it, rather than a bottomless abyss of unpayable debt, untreated illness, and homelessness.
I tend to think there are essentially oligarchs who benefit from all kinds of strife and discontent, and they’ve got the money and power to steer our politics and media toward all this chaos. It’s so evident what’s taking place when you step away from it into a calmer healthier culture...to me, we just have to take that money and power back, with taxes or by killing off the billionaires one by one, or enforcing monopoly laws or whatever it takes, and start using those resources to make our collective lives better.

[tbssux]

Seattle SJW chiming in here. Agree that other cities are pushing addicted/mentally I'll people to places like sea and pdx. But money isn't going to solve this. Quit frankly, it's about harm reduction....and relocating homeless service providers to a place like Meyers Park (unicorporated king county) would draw homeless people away downtown, parks, businesses. Sure, there would still be homeless people downtown but the numbers would decrease and maybe the police would be have the capacity to do their job. I live in Rainier Beach and there are no tents down here because there are no service providers. If some of the shelters sold their space in high rent areas like pioneer square and relocated to outer areas like Meyers, they'd have a lot more money to help. Also, transitional housing makes a lot more sense in Kent/Auburn/Renton (better access to entry level employment, cheaper land) tha. In downtown. It's never going to to happen because the political will for relocating service providers isn't there.

[Ted Striker]

i’d like to recommend Mercer Island for sue.

Lived there for many years. Great place.

[iceman]

All is well brother and I'll keep an eye toward the bow from the mizzenmast.
Pass at whiteh2o the last 2 years!
Hallo KQ!

nice to see your name, L.

Do you just drive up to wh2o?

[Ted Striker]

I tend to think we should insist on a humane baseline everywhere. I think we’d cultivate a more creative, more dynamic, healthier culture if we worked on ensuring there’s a reasonable floor for those who don’t make it, rather than a bottomless abyss of unpayable debt, untreated illness, and homelessness.

Definitely.

[natty dread]

nice to see your name, L.

Do you just drive up to wh2o?

Hey J!
Yep drive up, 7.5 hrs from hr—Really grown to love that whole zone, might spend winters there in a few years.