- More homeless on the streets?
The number of homeless people camping out on Seattle streets at night (about 1,986 at last count) could increase by the end of next week. One of King County’s largest shelter networks, Seattle Housing and Resource Effort (SHARE), said Saturday that it will have to close 11 of its 15 indoor shelters due to a lack of city funds. SHARE estimates that 400 homeless men, women, and children will be out of a place to sleep, putting pressure on other city shelters which are already over capacity.
SHARE receives $300,000 from the city for its shelters annually and some money to provide bus tickets to homeless people, says Sara Levin from the City of Seattle’s Human Services Department. It needs about $50,000 more to keep those 11 shelters running. When asked what it would mean to have more homeless people out on the city’s streets, Levin directed all queries to Mayor Mike McGinn’s spokesperson Aaron Pickus.
“I don’t have any details on this at the moment, but would like to point out that the city is currently facing a $50 million deficit,” Pickus replied via e-mail. The Stranger is still waiting to hear back from the mayor’s office about whether McGinn had a chance to meet with SHARE to talk about homeless issues. Beatrice Friberg, a member of SHARE says that homelessness is at an all time high four years into King County’s 10-year plan to end homelessness.
“Our job is to ensure that there are agencies and shelters out there to take care of homeless people,” Levin says. “We have already allocated $6.7 million dollars to different agencies this year.”
UPDATE: At 1:53 p.m. Aaron Pickus wrote to say: “About 25-30 members of SHARE arrived in our lobby about half an hour ago to request a meeting with the mayor. The mayor greeted them and invited them in to our main conference room to meet with our chief of staff and director of policy and operations.”
I’ve already got four.
Any chance we can bus them to Broadmoor?
And if any of them get pregnant and cannot eat properly we should abort their child, sterilize them and take their existing children away from them…Isn’t that what was stated last week:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…
Thank you # 1 for backing up my opinoin of some of those who post on this blog
@2, ummm, no, that column was about crazy parents who purposely starved their baby to keep it from getting fat.
SHARE is a fucked up organization. Shelters are a good thing and should be funded.
I don’t know how to reconcile those.
But Wall Street execs are still exhorbitantly wealthy, right???
They are? Ok good… whew, that was a close one!
#4 – Those people if you read the article are homeless…Sometimes not having food and shelter causing one to lose their minds…
#4 my apologies to you and everyone here I was wrong or reading a different article
@7 Or, more often, sometimes losing their mind causes one not to have food or shelter.
You should do a story on what SHARE does to end long term homelessness for it’s members. Your entire story would consist of the following: NOTHING.
SHARE is kinda weird for a group representing the homeless in that it’s leadership sees absolutely nothing wrong with being chronically homeless and considers it a viable lifestyle choice. There is a need for emergency shelter, but we wouldn’t need half as much if we did anything to help people back on their feet instead of encouraging them to stay homeless.
SHARE pulls this sky is falling routine regularly to shake down the city for more money, and I’d hardly trust them as far as I can throw their entire leadership. Just look into the dishonest way they dealt with the neighbors in Ballard that wound up getting them kicked out of the church they were using there.
i was in downtown Boise on Friday afternoon for several hours, and there were no homeless to be seen. where did they go? Seattle? Denver?
Boise has a downtown?
Idaho winters and bedrock conservatism drive the homeless far, far away.
Thanks for the warning – any streets in particular we should avoid?
@11 – Spokane.
Yeah, but you can get some cheap rents near ski resorts and summer camps the rest of the year, @13.
My tax dollars aren’t going to fund bums to ride the bus anymore? Win.
We should feel guilty that we can’t provide for the homeless that flock to US.
Noooope.
I say send them back to Mercer Island.