Compliments to the Seattle Times and criticism of Councilmember Sawant in the same Stranger article? What’s next, Charles extolling the virtues of rural life?

Well, it's from Tim Burgess's mind-control pawn!

Seriously, interesting points. I wish we could track the data on outcomes, because getting people housed versus shuffled around is the final number.

Outcomes should be evaluated in terms of reducing jail and hospital time, first and foremost.

how could you not interview one camper for this piece?

@1 made me laught. @4, good point!

Sounds a lot like the juvenile Justice center. Can't have a new courthouse with facilities to do better support for people in trouble because it also has a jail.

Odd that the "unsafe" camps are ALWAYS the ones people can see from I-5 and I-90.
Funny how we don't need more shelter beds, but only more "low barrier" shelter beds!
Homeless industrial complex is an enabling hoax and a scam on Seattle taxpayers.

I live on the waterfront in old Ballard ($1k a month for a one bedroom on the water - got lucky), and have watched the number of homeless campers and others living in RVs, cars and vans grow from a scattering here and there, to hundreds, if not thousands, particularly along the waterfront. My driveway is across from the Walrus and Carpenter restaurant, not a place I frequent, and every night, parked on either side of my driveway, extending for blocks in either direction, are dozens of RVs, in every kind of condition, plus vans of all kinds and the occasional school bus or hybrid truck thing of some kind.

I walk by them every day and even at night I don't feel particularly threatened, mostly because the last thing any of these people are looking for is trouble. They almost all have an interesting story to tell, with drugs and alcohol usually a common theme, along with past trouble with the law, and they're all very handy with vehicles of every description. And so this particular subset of homelessness has sort of a Mad Max quality to it that I have to admire on some level.

But, of the half dozen or so I've chatted with over the past year or two, none of them were from Seattle. The weather's better here than in the East and the cops are nicer. In fact, it's happening all over the West Coast, the left coast, as it were. Homelessness is actually declining in cities like New York and Baltimore, mostly because they've found the money and will to do something about it. But if you're a substance abuser with the nomad gene, and enough wits about you to get a home on wheels, this is a great place to live that lifestyle. Sounds more fun than public housing.

Different groups will rotate through, mostly because the cops will roust them after a month or so, and I've actually watched our finest in action a couple of times. And I have to say, and despite not being a big fan of cops in general, our men in blue and the well-intentioned team that accompanies them were very good. They treated them like real people, joked with them, helped jump their vehicles, handed out information that none them wanted but took anyway, and that was that. But, within a couple of days, as always, a different group moves in. Low key, quiet, tidy, sketchy, maybe not a bad choice for someone on the fringe. Just don't tell the UPS guy to leave any packages on the porch.

This article argues "um but the cops are nice" despite that being tangential to the actual problem.

Kicking homeless people out of every place they find to stay is the problem. That's why the chant is "stop the sweeps" and not "please hire some friendlier cops."

Yes, let's just pretend that homeless outreach improving dramatically in the last year had nothing to do with Stop the Sweeps activists. The city was always going to reform its process out of the goodness of their hearts, no political pressure was needed.

For all of you that think Kshama Sawant is unreasonable, that is entirely the point. Our current situation defies all reason. We are one of the 50 richest cities to ever exist in the world, yet through in every boom and every crash, homelessness just gets worse. It is time to reckon with the plain fact: this is a choice we as a city, and region have made. Dramatically different choices need to be made if we are actually going to end this cycle, and we won't get there with the same incremental neoliberal nonsense.

Google another stranger article. Is the godfather running SHARE shelters ?

This article is very well done, covers an important issue that affects public safety and is timely as we head into winter. There is so much time, energy and money spent on the "Stop the Sweeps" protests and political movement. It seems if all those resources were redirected toward increasing and improving our shelters and demanding expedited permitting for mixed income housing we might actually get people inside.

If the homeless are going to trash the city, cover it with raw sewage, and otherwise create a blight for the rest of the community, mandatory work crews by the offending parties to reduce their impact should be the very minimum required for them to remain unmolested by the city.