welp, even Danny Westneat knows where there's that amount just laying around: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/a-taxpayer-financed-brewpub-at-least-we-could-drown-our-seattle-sorrows/

"The passage of the head tax in May was “really exciting” for DESC employees who usually face a lack of resources for new projects and services, Nordgen says. “To defund our organizations is not going to help."

DESC has not been "defunded." It remains among the larger beneficiaries (if not the largest) of the 2016 Housing Levy.

@1:

The problem grows because those hundreds of millions of dollars barely scratch the surface in terms of providing a long-term solution to a problem that continues to grow and negatively affect an ever increasing number of our fellow citizens; it's not because we've spent too much money, but because we haven't been willing to spent anywhere near the real amount required to solve it.

And OF COURSE it has everything to do with money: money for housing, for services, for support, for employment training, for food, for medical and health care - or do you think problems created by a system that uses money as its principal medium of exchange can somehow be magically solved using some other medium? If so, I'm sure we'd be very happy indeed for you to tell us all what that would be.

We need to ban camping in the city of Seattle and put our current $50 million into providing more shelter beds. The only options provided should be a shelter bed with treatment for addiction and mental illness or a bus ticket out of town. Once the zombie apocolypse on our streets, parks and green spaces is addressed through enforcement and a regional plan with shared responsibility and performance metrics is in place, then the citizens and businesses of Seattle will support a tax for long-term housing solutions. The citizen revolt is primarily against the stupidity of the ideological leadership in this city and lack of accountability, not a tax.

If Calvin Priest cares about his mental health he will sleep with the homeless tonight. His spouce is likely to be abnormally loud this evening.

@4: "work smarter, not harder"! also, "barb roppe"!

"Where is that money going to come from?"
That's a question to put to the folks in Speak Out Seattle who insist there is already enough in the budget if only it were used more efficiently and transparently. IMO the ball is in their court now to come up with the answers they are sure are there.

@4 Did you look at the proposed spending plan?

The amount allocated to "wage stabilization for city-funded homelessness direct service providers" was roughly double what was allocated to "addiction and medical services." In other words, we would have prioritized raises for folks like the service providers quoted in the article over addressing the large number of mentally ill homeless with substance abuse problems.

Is that that long-term solution you had in mind?

No accountability by the banks, corporate landlords, massive corporations that cause misery, poverty, low wages and profit immensely from the turmoil they cause ordinary people. Our well paid politicians serve them well. Lets blame the homeless sure. How stupid can you get?

These wall streeters get bailed out, paid out at our expense. Anyone defending them should be called a coward and worse. It takes cowards to kick people when they are down.

“The courage to take it.”.

That’s it in a nutshell. You think you’re entitled to money, you don’t have to earn it. You shouldn’t have to account for it. You should just “take it” and do what you feel is right with it.

If we’re just gonna start taking stuff from people, why don’t we take your shit? Take your house and give it to some homeless people. They have a “right” to shelter. Correct? Let’s take your car, Someone could live there too. Your job too, while we’re at it. Let’s take your job and spend the money that was wasted on whatever it is you think you do and give it to some nice family who’s just down on their luck.

See, I’m all for helping the homeless too...as long as it’s with your shit.

@10

Who do you suppose is doing all the floor-cleaning and mattress-flipping and counseling and stock-keeping and case-filing and addiction-and-medical-referring for those services? Robots? Prisoners on work release? Offseason migrant fruit-pickers?

Yes, someone is going to get paid when we spend money on services. That's just how modern economies work, it's not a vast conspiracy fill the closets of the Homlessness Elite with Birkenstocks.

Just looked at the City of Seattle 2018 Adopted Budget. There is a $71million increase in revenues from 2017 to 2018. Where's that going?

$8.75 million divided by 500 divided by 12 months
= $1460/month

Pretty nice digs.

Jesus. Think about it for fuck sake.

You understand the city has been growing at the fastest rate of nearly any city in the US (if not THE fastest). We’ve added between 15k to 30k residents a year since the late 1990’s.

That means the city budget HAS to grow too. You think we can just jam people into existing infrastructure and services forever without a corresponding growth in revenue?

All the dipshit rightwing trolls in here with this bullshit “work smarter not harder” aphoristic horseshit have no idea the chasm in funding services this city is dealing with because of this moronic albatross of funding everything through property taxes. Sure property values are skyrocketing but there is only so much property and people keep coming - mostly renters.

The right has been cutting social services all over the US for thirty years - services for mental health and addiction treatment. So those with no where to turn go to big cities with what ever scant programs they have.

And about a third of homeless people are drug dependent or have mental health issues and are unemployable until those issues are resolved. There are huge waiting lists to get on these programs. While they wait they need places to live. So saying we fund this shit enough is just callous and delusional. We don’t. Not even close.

And BTW about 40% of homeless people HAVE jobs but can not afford rents. Not in Seattle. Not in Renton. Not anywhere close. And this is where the jobs are.

But the worm will turn for you fuckers. All you assholes making poverty some moral failing your doing it as some subconscious incantation to ward off your own misfortune. Because to face the tenuous reality of your own precious position in this society is too much for you. I come from dumbshits like you. Most my family were rich until they weren’t. When the climate changed or a monopoly formed that undercut the price of what they grew. And then they balled for the same gubmint they SHIT on to bail them out.

I’ve been poor. I’m rich now. Sure. But that shit can go away like “that!” I’ve seen it. One bad diagnosis, one car wreck and even someone like me making a very, very comfortable living can tumble. No matter how prepared and right thinking you are. It can happen.

So. Your making your own nooses. And some of you selfish piles of shit who I KNOW are not rich who I know even I make more than you - will choke on your words... sooner rather than later. Because the correction is coming. And it’s going to be a doozy for all these entitled shit bags who think they are so superior because they make some pittance of $100k. You’ll learn it’s NOTHING.

We could always lower minimum wage so small businesses could afford to employ the homeless.

@20. Are you one of those crystal ball “I can see the future and you’re totally gonna get your uppity comeuppance” doctors? Or like a for really reals “abuse your own Rx pad” doctors?

My moneys on a hybrid.

@20 40,000+ Seattlites signed to get the tax repeal, don't swing that they are all right wingers bull shit. Just because your a democrat doesn't mean you have to support every tax floated by a city that to date cant seem to figure out a way to make a dent in the dope on the street. We have every right to be upset with the city and I think city counsel realized that they are on a short leash after this fiasco.

I still don't believe they would have had enough signatures. It's a bluff. Whatever bullshit polls they showed the city council in their smoke filled from were definitely a bluff. If they had managed to cobble together enough signatures to put this turd on the ballot, it would have gone down in flames. We know the ultra rich corporations were desperate to find a way to not face that prospect, and they were prepared to say just about anything to their captive audience in that backroom deal. Scared them somehow. Or just snowed them with phony data and a slick dog and pony show.

Total bullshit. I just listen to the rank libertarianism, the unreformed trickle down economics, the laughable Trumpist mercantilism coming from one hundred percent of the repeal supporters, and I don't believe most of them even live in Seattle. I can say for sure that the the ones I know who oppose it are not actually Seattle residents.

There are not that many fucking Trumpers and trickle downers living in Seattle. If there were, how come their best candidate placed sixth in the mayor primary? It doesn't add up. It's a sham.

But here we are. I guess Durkan's going to keep running her brutal sweeps and somebody is going to propose hiring more cops and building jail cells, and that's going to be the plan. Nobody will demand close oversight of the police budget, or the jail building contract. Not the kind of waste that these fucking fucks care about.

I propose a $1000 per year head tax on the largest 2% of employers, to be put in the city's general fund, tied to significant but smaller cut in both sales and property tax. The net effect calibrated to increase the overall budget by $50 million. No specific budget plan tied to this tax reform. Just somewhat less regressive taxation and a less starved city budget. Increasing homeless services would obviously be in the cars, but not tied to the tax reform.

Also can we begin offering moving assistance to any employer that wishes to leave town? Like at least a token $1. Or even a generous $1000 per job they move out of town. Call it the "Don't let the door hit you in the ass" law. The fact is these employers wouldn't ever be in Seattle if they had any real choice. They are here because this is where the talent is. If they could realistically move to bumfuck, they would have moved to bumfuck long ago. Offer them $10,000 per employee to leave Seattle. They'll stay. It's a fucking bluff.

@24. De-Nile is also a river in Egypt.

@24

they are here because this is where the talent is.

Yeah, all of the people from India and China here on H1-B visas helping to blow up the house rental market just happened to show up at the right time.

@24:

“I still don't believe they would have had enough signatures.”

Do you still believe Jenny Durkan’s campaign was down ten points in the polls, a mere ten days before our most recent mayoral election?

“If they had managed to cobble together enough signatures to put this turd on the ballot, it would have gone down in flames.”

B-b-but what if they’d hired Jenny Durkan’s mayoral campaign team — you know, the one you still credit with engineering a 22.5-point turnaround in less than ten days? Would they have won like she did?

Please continue to entertain us with everything you think you know about our city.

Show me the proof. Show me the verified signatures. Show me what the biz lobby said behind closed doors. Show me what they showed to the city council. Show me the objective polling saying the repeal had any chance of passing. You're asking me to take the word of people who are known liars, with a lot of money on the line if their lie gets found out.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It's a sham.

You self entitled rich people can experience disaster like anyone else. Your bubble can burst.

You think you can buy everything. I feel sorry for you because you are so pathetic and cannot care for your fellow human beings who are facing the violence and terror of homelessness and extreme poverty. All your fabrications and phony pleas are sick.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn dear, I hate to break it to you, but I was at the Hilltop Red Apple (Beacon Hill), the Rainier Ave QFC, and the Rainier Ave Safeway over the last few weeks, and people were lining up to sign the recall petitions. The signature gatherers didn't have to lie. They didn't even need to convince people. They just collected signatures.

@12 thinks himself an island. Bad days will one day come for you, too, as they do for all. Just wait and see.

28: KIRO commissioned a poll (https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/exclusive-kiro-7-strategies-360-poll-on-seattle-head-tax/749118634) and it found 54% against to 38% approve. The original $500 level had a 70% disapproval. I don’t think 7 members of the City Council were duped by some smoke and mirrors conspiracy.

Shocker: Stop Doing Business With Strategies 360 http://www.sightline.org/2015/06/10/stop-doing-business-with-strategies-360/

33: How does Shell Oil benefit from cooking up this poll? Or is big oil and coal part of this conspiracy (along with Dow Constantine and former Governor Gregoire) too? Why submit thousands more signatures than needed if they are somehow fake or obtained falsely? Why is it so hard to accept we know know the upper limit of what Seattle voters will accept in new taxes, as many pundits have wondered for awhile now?

“now know”, sorry.

27: Ah, Tensor, the conservative who keeps pretending to be a "progressive"...or, at least, the "progressive" who thinks it's "progressive" to try to solve homelessness through mass arrests and what the great Utah Phillips referred to as "rolling the bums out of town". The sort who thinks it's "progressive" to leave the problem up to sanctimonious, judgmental private charity, in a world where charity is pretty much just about giving the "charitable" the chance to delude themselves as to their generosity and inherent personal superiority. Exactly the sort of person who'd have stood up and cheered in Santiago in 1973 when Allende was overthrown and democratic socialism replaced by a "free market" police state. That's what the sort of "progressive" who cheered the head tax repeal is, at lack of heart.

20, not only that, but "Work Smarter, Not Harder", is what Dilbert's boss says every time he gives Dilbert or Alice another impossible task on another pathetically small budget on another unmeetable timeline.

Good grief there are a lot of a-holes in the world.

People are up in arms about the richest companies in the city paying what amounts to chump change for them. Where is the logic. Where is the empathy. Bezos alone has enough wealth to independently fund housing the homeless for many years, but oh lord, where or where will the money come from? How about the vultures quit stealing our labor (wealth) and it is more fairly distributed? Amazing concept. Not really.

28: and that was the same KIRO 7 that has abandoned any standard of journalistic integrity by cheerleading for the head tax repeal in its newscasts.

It should also be pointed out, for all the folks who claim they love the military and its veterans, our veterans make up a substantial portion of the homeless population.

"we know know the upper limit of what Seattle voters will accept in new taxes"

Seattle voters weren't going to be taxed more. If anything, if this kind of head tax is off the table, it follows that it will be exactly these overtaxed average citizens who will have to bear the burden. The whole point of a new progressive tax was to NOT raise property or sales taxes yet again.

The fact that there are mobs running around who don't get this basic stuff is all the more proof that the Seattle Times and KIRO TV and their ilk are shameless corporate propaganda. It's all a sham.

I'm glad the Head Tax is gone. With all of the Levies and tax increases, and The "Housing Tax" on developers who choose to pay into a fund. Rather than have low income apartments in their buildings? Where is that cash? Has the City used any of it to build housing? The city shouldn't be asking any one for money when they themselves have not built housing for whoever.

I know the rumors (and these types of rumors are usually true). The city was in a hard spot. Revenue lost to other nearby cities would have cancelled out any gain in funding from the tax.

Homelessness isn't just a Seattle problem, although it's ballooned here in a short period of time. It's a national problem. It's an indication that there's something fundamentally and seriously wrong not only with our economy, but our political, social, and cultural values as well.

Our economy is sick, on a national scale. Record employment rates are a sham when much of that employment brings incomes that often can just barely cover basic living expenses. It's an outrage to point to those employment numbers with pride, and for any party or leader to take credit for them. And please don't bring up that gig economy BS. It's just another form of worker exploitation that harkens back to the piece work of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Spare us the BS that many of those people struggling to survive are too stupid, lazy, or unmotivated to better themselves. Many of them care for and teach your children, take care of your health, ensure your safety, even handle your finances. When a health care technician who must have accredited post-secondary education as well as be licensed can't afford to live in or near the same community as the people he/she provides care to, something is rotten at the core.

Yet locally and nationally we have nobody in a leadership position of any political persuasion who's willing to address directly the fact that America's train has jumped the tracks. Instead we get empty slogans about making America great again and spoiler candidates advocating the recreation of the New Deal, as if any of that would work in 21st century America.

There is a true vacuum of leadership in our major political parties as well as what we laughingly call the third parties. There also appears to be an unprecedented paucity of new economic and social ideas and innovative solutions being developed and presented by those in academia.

It's as if those in the US in positions to lead are now universally terrified to actually do so, so they continually defer to vastly overcompensated corporate captains to look out for America's future, even though it's painfully clear to all of us the only future they're looking out for is their own. Yet we worship them and see them as role models to emulate even though they've destroyed so many American lives. I believe now we call them disrupters. Yeah, well there was a real human cost to those disruptions. You can see some of it sleeping under I-5.

On most days now, I believe and fear that the US is on a downhill slide, gaining speed and momentum at such a rate its descent can never be stopped or reversed. I can only hope I'm wrong.

@40: The head tax wasn’t progressive. A company could operate in the red and still have to pay the tax. A large gross income is not the same thing as a large net income.

You might want to lecture your fellow citizens less, and listen to us a bit more. Or you can continue to get blindsided by easily-predictable political defeats. Your choice.

I showed my kid these comments and she noted that she learned in health class that people reveal their ugliest selves online.

I thought the hilarious and impotent pouting from the staff bloggers was the funniest thing until I read the breathless conspiracy theories in this thread.

"The signatures were fake, they bought off the council, they must be outside agitators from evil red states, it was lizard people from the mooooooon!"

I guess it is easier to believe in vast conspiracies than to admit that you were wrong about something, or that other people exist who disagree with you. Comically huge and fragile egos often operate that way.

@40 if you believe that the initiative signatures were fake then you must believe the Sawant minions are the real voice of Seattle

"Even as the city council unanimously passed the employee hours tax, also known as the head tax, last month, it wasn’t clear exactly how the money from the tax would be spent."

And therein lies the problem and the objection. Money first, plan later. People are fed up with that.

Seattle already spends more per capita on homelessness than any other city in the US. And third most in actual spending, despite being about the 25th largest city in the country. No one believes that more money will make things better. For anyone.

what I find funny about this whole deal is that this was more about taxing the bad amazon/rich than helping the homeless. Sawant attacked a local icon, like it or not that provides a massive boost to this region in good jobs. How many of those hip new bars and restaurants that the Slog fawns over would be here if it wasn't for the hiring boom this city has seen? But like others have stated this was a rushed, flawed money grab by a city counsel that is so blinded by special interest it forgot that there was many more companies affected by this than Amazon. The majority of Seattle (yes majority) realized that its insane to tax companies that provide the most jobs to pay for a cities inability to do anything other than grandstand on the homeless issue. If the referendum went to the ballot it would have passed and the counsel members that defended it would be on the chopping block.

@49, people have been asking that on Slog back in the days of my old log in on here. The Stranger (and the commentators on Slog) love to take a shit on Amazon while pushing bars, clubs and restaurants that only the "tech-bros" could ever afford to eat at. Hell, those are the only people that can afford to live anywhere close to downtown Seattle.

And make no mistake..This repeal was about one thing. Fear of turnout by a block of motivated voters who were skeptical of the need for more revenue, and skeptical of the city's ability to spend it wisely. Getting the referendum off the ballot makes those voters more likely to stay home and make other issues on the ballot related to revenue more likely to pass. I'm guessing orders came from the party.

The "Education" levy is going to go down in flames, too. People are fed up with high taxes and low results. Enough.

Sincere question:

The right wing media claims that there there are excess beds every night at nearly every shelter in the city:

http://mynorthwest.com/843188/fact-check-nikkita-oliver-claim/?

Is this true? It seems like the data is correct ....

@53 MyNorthwest is hardly right wing, I love how if your a centrist or support business your now labeled a trump loving right wing nut

@12 Are you from Seattle, or are you also "from other places" or "not from here" like these homeless folks?

@16 I think you are missing the point. We all know we have: (1) a regional problem with homelessness, and (2) to address the problem, we need significantly more permanent, low-income housing.

The head tax primarily funded locally-based, short term measures. Because it was set to sunset in 5 years, it could not be used as a vehicle to fund construction bonds. That means it could only fund permanent housing as the money came in--the result being it would bring on a relatively small number of housing units no sooner than 3 to 5 years from now.

It was a dumb plan, and a different approach could have done far more with the same money. There's no debating that point: this tax was a poor choice for addressing the need for permanent housing. It was, as you suggest, however, an easy way to pay for a continuation of the same failed programs we have been throwing millions at for well over a decade now.

P.S.: We could pull the same amount of funding from the hotel and rental car tax, which would support a construction bond because it does not sunset in 5 years like the head tax. Out-of-towners with disposable income bear the brunt of that tax. This approach would allow for the construction of nearly twice the amount of permanent housing units. Isn't that better than a wildly unpopular head tax?

Libertarian wingnut @55 claims that taxing the wealthy to fund low income housing is "far left". FDR would have been ultra-left according to these modern day regressives.

The most entertaining thing to come out of this is watching all the far left moonbats heads explode at the prospect that they have lost funding for what seemed like a luxury-class gravy train. Almost as funny as seeing them lose their collective wit and running around with pussy hats after Trump was elected.

Shorter @5:

"I don't want to solve the problem of homelessness - I just want them to disappear from my sight."

@9:

Ah yes, more bootstrapping platitudes and exactly zero actual solutions. Getting off drugs and alcohol is great - in theory. I suppose your plan is to just make everyone do it "cold turkey", because it's so easy and definitely never leads to recidivism, right? And I don't recall running across a single homeless person who thinks they're "owed money", but when you live on the streets you have to get it somehow in order to stay alive, because getting a job is pretty difficult when you have no home, no way to stay clean and healthy, no resources, and no prospects. Would YOU hire a homeless person, even if they asked really, really politely?

@10:

Providing support services is vital to solving the problem. Adding more funding in that area = more homeless people who can be provided with those services. Or do you think the people who do that work should be paid as minimum wage-slaves as well?

LOL @ $9M for 500 "beds". Just LOL.

@54 MyNorthwest isn't on the right? Goodness then I never want to meet the right in a dark alley ...

But yeah, nah, MyNorthwest is certainly coming from a rightist perspective, that's not the middle

@63 to be fair that works out to $18,000 per, which is not that ridiculous from a construction standpoint.

@65 - these are beds in shelters and other forms of temporary housing, not new housing

62: No, Kshama's supporters(they aren't "minions"-they support the ideas she champions on the merits of those ideas and think for themselves-they take orders from no one) never said $15/hour would solve all problems or create utopia They said it was one step on the path to justice. But you knew that.