When Seattle elected Bruce Harrell in 2021, voters were clear they wanted safer streets, housing they could afford, and far fewer people living without a home. They’re still our top concerns, and they’ve all gotten worse in the last four years. He has also presided over a city hall marked by misogyny, abuse, and a culture of contempt.
Harrell doesn’t break promises and produce abysmal results because he’s overwhelmed. It’s because fixing these problems is in direct conflict with his guiding principle to protect the powerful at any cost. The Chamber of Commerce, mansion-owners, corrupt cops, and serial sexual predators—he is their knight. We pay the price.
Public Safety: The $100 Million Lie
Harrell campaigned on public safety. He told voters he’d reduce crime, remove drugs from the street, and restore confidence in a police department that had abused its citizens before, during, and after the George Floyd protests. Instead, he has supervised a downward spiral.
Since Harrell took office, homicides have increased by 23 percent and rape is up by 15 percent, as of the end of 2024. Horrible on its own terms—but catastrophic in context. When Harrell took office, homicide was falling in our generally low-homicide town. But while national violent crime and murder fell fast during his term, Seattle bucked that trend. The homicide rate declined a bit last year, but we’re still much worse off than when he started.
Harrell’s actions in office certainly haven’t helped. He poured an extra $100 million into the police department in 2024 and bagged exactly one net new officer, a predictable result given the acute national and regional shortage of police at the time. Now that the market is recovering, hiring is increasing some, but the spending levels relative to return remain obscene. Compared to similar cities, he slow-walked an alternative to armed response, which he has chronically underfunded. His feeble negotiating with the police union means we have a civilian crisis team capped at 24 members, no new police accountability, and zero leverage left because he gave it all away. And instead of restoring trust in the department, this city has given police new surveillance tools and placed blast balls back into their hands.
Drug deaths followed a path similar to crime. Fentanyl overdoses nearly doubled during Harrell’s first two years in office. As San Francisco began turning the tide, Seattle got worse. Instead of scaling up behavioral health care and diversion programs, Harrell slashed funding. The results have been fatal. San Francisco’s death rates are below those from 2021—ours are up 47 percent.
Housing: Gutting the Future to Appease the Rich
While public safety struggled, housing costs soared. Under Harrell, the median monthly mortgage payment in Seattle jumped from 32 percent of income to 45 percent. For the middle class in Seattle, homeownership is out of reach. Interest rates played a big part, but some cities, like Austin, have built enough housing to actually reduce their housing prices compared to 2023. Not Seattle. Renters have fared slightly better, but prices certainly haven’t dropped. They’re just treading water because Harrell has failed to build.
Permitting has plummeted to a decade-long low. If we follow Harrell’s underwhelming comprehensive plan proposal, we’ll be even less affordable in 20 years than we are now. And when his own planning staff proposed a more ambitious alternative that would have made much more space for the housing the county says we need, Harrell overruled them–including on parts of the plan designed to keep residents from getting pushed out of gentrifying neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Harrell has cut nearly $100 million a year in funding for affordable housing. He also tried to kill the city’s new social housing developer at the ballot box.
Homelessness: Surging on His Watch
You have to fix housing to fix homelessness. Harrell’s failures on housing have had a domino effect on homelessness.
When the pandemic hit, homelessness grew by 13.7 percent in Seattle. On Harrell’s watch, it has risen by 26.2 percent. But we’re not talking about an abstract statistic, we’re talking about people: at least 3,480 more homeless people, 2,125 of them sleeping outside. Harrell promised 2,000 shelter beds. We’ve actually lost 128.
Harrell claims to support Housing First. But as anyone can see, his real strategy is “sweeps first”—an expensive, cruel cascade of displacement that’s eating nearly half our shelter budget. We spend half of it—half—on sweeps. The state knows they don’t work. The county knows they don’t work. Even Harrell knows they don’t work. The point is to create an illusion of progress. It’s a show.
Worse still, Harrell slashed funding for effective programs LEAD and CoLEAD, rental assistance and food support.
Harrell’s Hostile Workplace
This preference for the powerful seems to know no bounds.
His own former deputy mayor and niece, Monisha Harrell, recently said the administration’s culture of “casual cruelty” toward women came from the top. The evidence backs her up. Six other female members of his staff told KUOW he was condescending to women and shut them out of essential meetings, favoring his white, male advisors.
Harrell defended former Mayor Ed Murray even after multiple credible accusations of child sexual abuse. He dismissed it as something that “maybe didn’t happen” and awkwardly joked about the fallout afterward on a podcast, where he insisted that his “judgment was spot on.”
He kept disgraced police chief Adrian Diaz on payroll even as sexual harassment, sexism, and bias lawsuits in the police department piled up. He let Diaz keep his $338,000 salary, reassigned him to “special projects,” and praised his “integrity” at a press conference. He didn’t fire Diaz until months later—only after new evidence forced his hand.
And he did the same with longtime associate Pedro Gomez, who was credibly accused of rape. Harrell didn’t act for months—not until the case was referred to the King County Prosecutor.
In fact, his indifference to those who do not have power seems to extend to his off-hours as well. He reportedly pulled a gun on a woman who was eight months pregnant, her husband, and her mother over a parking spot.
We Deserve Better
This November, voters will be told that Harrell is the steady hand. That he’s the adult in the room. A man of experience, a man of action, a man with a plan. But look around you. He has been mayor for more than three years, and was on the council for a dozen more. Has he addressed your concerns? Has he delivered on his promises? Has he represented your values?
Seattle needs a mayor who tells the truth, stands against entrenched power, and fights for the people this city is squeezing. Bruce Harrell is not that guy. He’ll never be. It’s time to replace him.
Ron Davis is an entrepreneur, policy wonk, and past candidate for Seattle City Council.
Well-written and well-researched. I’m excited to vote him out this November. I wish we didn’t have to wait so long.
@1: Not. I good writer doesn’t overwhelm the reader with a link in every other sentence, potentially randomizing them and even impeding what the author is attempting to say. Gather up the more tangential links and put them at the bottom as “for more information…”
Good grief Ron. Hope you learn from this.
Harrell convincing voters he was a change candidate is almost as impressive as Trump convincing voters he cared about the middle and working classes
@2: LOL… your complaint appears to be that the author backed his claims with evidence? I’d prefer more writers do that.
Can we get some new voices please…Ron Davis has been featured here multiple times and is a Harvard educated tech industry consultant who orbits amongst progressive power brokers —almost held office himself! Let’s get some folks who live in poorer neighborhoods, off single incomes, people who speak multiple languages at home, who were classified as “essential workers” during COVID, please and thank you!
Ron,
“His feeble negotiating with the police union.”
The statement is missing key context that is important for the public to understand the issue. Police, like cops, firefighters, and other essential public employees are prohibited from striking. That means that labor law must provide a binding alternative dispute resolution mechanism on both sides.
That is an arbitrator. The arbitrator’s mission is to bring resolution to any dispute with both sides being as minimally unhappy as possible. Their mission in short is: Peace.
Arbitrators have created a body of precedent over the decades interpreting labor contracts without the right to strike.
Harrell and the police union, negotiate with an arbitrator’s gun to their heads, so to speak. Both sides can look to precedent in similar cases, at similar agencies, with similar contract terms, around the county and see how arbitrators have landed on any given issue.
If Harrell, or the union, presents a demand at the negotiating table on a particular subject where arbitrators have most often found for the other side, the other side negotiates for a time, to meet requirements of demonstrating good faith, then seeks a declaration of impasse so they can submit the issue to an arbitrator for a ruling that will probably go in their favor.
So how does Harrell, or the union, get something that arbitrators have most often ruled against? They trade an unrelated issue that they want, and won’t win on with an arbitrator.
Harrell is negotiating on “an alternative response” with a arbitrator’s gun to his head. No arbitrator, wanting to keep labor/management peace, is going to rule that work traditionally done by one group of employees, can be given to another.
Such scope of work guarantees to a particular bargaining unit insures that management won’t agree to wages, benefits, and working conditions with a bargaining unit, only to turn around when the ink is dry, and lay-off members of the bargain unit, sub-contracting the work out to a competing bargaining unit, and unrepresented group of employees, or a private contractor.
Such scope of work guarantees have the unintended consequence of slowing innovation or changing the nature of the City’s response to crime and street disorder, even if there are evidence-based alternatives that are shown to get better outcomes, perhaps at less cost. It tends to shackle government to delivering government services today and tomorrow, to the way they were delivered yesterday.
Harrell will probably have to give up some unrelated issue that the union can’t win on with an arbitrator to transfer more response work, and hours of paid, likely overtime, hours, to different bargaining unit, group of employees, or private contractors. He will have to make a very unpleasant choice to get there, absent agreement by the bargaining unit that has typically done the response, to an “alternative” to their members getting the call, and paid hours, to respond to.
Also, some 90% of police calls have their classification changed between the initial call being dispatched and final resolution.
Some examples: A citizen reports a theft in progress (misdemeanor) and the officer gets to the scene and investigates and it actually turns out to be an armed robbery (violent felony). A citizen reports an assault in progress, and cops get there and its a mentally ill man screaming in an aggressive manner at the person who has told the person to leave their business or residential property. It seems much more of real physical threat than it actually is to uninitiated. The call goes from assault to welfare check, or trespass. Felony to misdemeanor, or no crime at all.
That means the City response needs to be flexible. The responder must be equipped to adapt to whatever they find at the scene, which could escalate all the way up to using deadly force in defense of the cop, or a defense of a victim, or could de-escalate down to “Tim, It looks like you are having a rough day. Can I get you a ride to Harborview, like I did last time I got called out to see you? I don’t want to see you get hurt, or go to jail.”
I used to supervise mental health workers that did outreach to the homeless. I am all for an “alternatives to armed response”; however, it needs to be dual response, until it’s determined the person being responded to doesn’t have a weapon and isn’t manifesting violence. I wouldn’t want my mental health workers to become the generalist, like the cop, who can go from a friendly conversation, to deadly force, and back again, as the person they are interacting with dictates by the threat, or absence of threat, that they exhibit.
Oh, and the first time, a mental health worker gets assaulted, stabbed, or shot, responding to a call without a cop, Labor and Industries is going to step in and mandate they be equipped with vests, radios, training, and possibly even weapons to prevent injury or death. Then they will look, and be like the cop to the person they are responding to.
Mental health workers don’t do their work, until and unless, the person is not manifesting violence or threat of violence, or criminal behavior. If they are exhibiting that, then L & I requires they retreat and call a cop so that they can be restrained, cuffed, transported, and if necessary drugged by an E.R. doc to end the psychosis driving the threat, or sedated to the point they can’t threaten. Then, and only then, will L & I let the mental health worker treat. Treatment can only happen when the treating worker is safe.
So it is never going to be a true substitution of armed response for unarmed response. It will be a combination of both. Cahoots (Eugene) is dispatched to non-violent, non-criminal calls. They are trained to assess when they get there, from inside a vehicle preferably, or from a very safe distance, before they do anything else, including contacting the person being responded to. If there is a weapon, agitation that is manifesting as possible violence, or any crime, no matter how small the crime, they must back-off and call for an armed responder to take over or provide security to them. The armed responder then is calling the shots, and may, or may not delegate to the mental health responder to be the lead communicator in the interaction.
We aren’t even to the Cahoots level of response in Seattle. We should be. But that is the most we can expect, given the interactions of labor law and worker safety laws and regulations. That is something Seattle should aspire to; however, it isn’t going to result in substituting mental health workers for police, in all but a tiny percentage 880,000 calls that SPD was dispatched to last year. In most cases it will be a dual response.
It means adding labor, in addition to the officers, not a substitution of their labor for other labor. That costs money that Harrell and even the most progressive council don’t want to cough up.
Ron,
That Harrell “gave it all away” is a reasonable critique. Cops got substantial increases in pay in the last contract without having to accept more accountability and more “alternatives to unarmed response.”
The critique is only reasonable if the cops could not have won the wage increase anyway at arbitration. The City’s and Unions respective Labor Attorneys looked at the compensation question in great detail, and advised their clients what they thought was the most probable outcome at arbitration to the compensation issue. If The City’s attorney was advising the City that the Union would likely prevail at arbitration on the wage question, the City’s negotiating team really did have wage gains to offer in exchange for “alternatives to armed response” and accountability.
“He kept disgraced police chief Adrian Diaz on payroll even as sexual harassment, sexism, and bias lawsuits in the police department piled up. …. He didn’t fire Diaz until months later—only after new evidence forced his hand.”
Without that evidence the City would have lost a wrongful termination lawsuit by Diaz. Even with it, the City still faces that they will lose the sexism and bias lawsuits brought by the six women, and lose the lawsuit that has been filed by Diaz stemming from his termination. Welcome to the crazy world of public employment and civil law.
Ron,
Where I strongly agree with you is the critique of the Mayor (and voters) on housing.
Even though I have spent some time critiquing other aspects of your criticism of Harrell, you have made a worthy addition to the issues that voters need to consider in the Harrell v. Wilson contest.
Even with my critiques of your critique, I not saying you are wrong or off-base, just that you are not including context that put Harrell, or any other Mayor and Council, in a strait jacket that constrain their ability to be responsive to their own electorate and innovate how municipal services are delivered.
@4: No, it’s about the editorial style, not the content.
@2 Ron’s style is emblematic of progressives’ failures to capture power: heavy on data and university level vocabulary, light on real people and how they move/feel through the city. The electorate is really tired of these so-called champions of the working class who make consultant dollars and write long wonky reference filled screeds. Page count doesn’t get you points outside of academia!
🤡
The stranger is going hard for a primary everyone knows Bruce will finish in the top two. And as others have pointed out, cops and firefighters have binding arbitration – both parties always run the risk of overplaying their position (this is not a split the difference – it’s winner takes all).
If any of these progressives had actually ran an executive department, they’d know these things (they sound like they’re running for the wrong office).
And aside, interesting Ron cut his crime statistics at the end of 24 given the precipitous drop in 25 – he sounds like clown Mike Sloan.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattles-big-crime-drop-of-2025-is-upending-political-narratives/
“Harrell defended former Mayor Ed Murray even after multiple credible accusations of child sexual abuse.”
“[C]redible” only if you’d swallowed the emissions of male convicts, which Ron apparently did, big-time. Given that Ron can’t even get the nature of the accusations right (none of Murray’s accusers said they were children at the times of his alleged crimes), and that Harrell utterly crushed Gonzalez immediately after she’d thrown this very smear at him, I’d say Ron didn’t get his penicillin soon enough after he’d swallowed.
It’s all downhill from here, Ron; enjoy your slide.
So tired of people bitching about the police cameras. If you are not breaking the law you have nothing to worry about. SPD does not have the time or manpower to go on these fishing expeditions people claim without evidence that happen to communities or color and the LGBTQ community. No one should expect privacy out on a public sidewalk. If someone pulls up in a car and shoots me I sure as hell want the camera so they can get a license plate and descriptions. All this Orwellian false narrative stuff is fake news.
I know the solution to all our problems: a latte tax!
It took 15 years for leftists to truly fuck up this city, starting with McGinn. It’ll take at least a decade to unfuck it.
Bruce Harrell for Mayor!
I’m looking forward to reading the editorial that TS already has written and prepped for 2029:
“Katie Wilson has ruined Seattle with her far-right positions and endless back-room deals with shadowy corporate forces. We deserve better!”
@6 You offer quite a histrionic perspective on civilian alternatives to sworn officers with guns and the power of arrest being used to respond to calls for service, but the fact is that what were then called civilian Police Aides as a solo alternative were proven to work in 1973. Alternative response in lieu of officers at a lower cost is a long-solved issued, as you can read in, for example, the police-led Police Executive Research Forum’s report “Embracing Civilianization Integrating Professional Staff to Advance Modern Policing.”
Or you can look to the use of Police Service Officers in such wokist enclaves as Bellevue, WA.
Dual response is a red herring. Harrell – or hopefully a better next mayor – needs to stop prostrating themselves to SPOG grifters and do right by taxpayers.
@11 “The electorate is really tired of these so-called champions of the working class who make consultant dollars and write long wonky reference filled screeds.”
+1 great point, although this is a more widespread problem among the left of center not solely limited to progressives
@13 are you really splitting hairs parsing teens from “children” in a comment also laden with blowjob metaphors? Someone call the FBI to check tensorna’s browser history
@16 oh look it’s one of the credulous rubes I indirectly referenced in 3!
@19: You really think there’s no difference between underage sex and child molestation? Sounds like your browser history would make for a far more interesting FBI read than mine!
A good metaphor succinctly describes the situation in a memorable manner. As the sole attempt by Murray’s accusers to provide evidence swiftly ended in ludicrous farce (Murray’s longtime physician provided a sworn affidavit, refuting the claim made by two career felons who wanted money), a belief in Murray’s guilt depends upon swallowing the emissions of male convicts. Put that way, the quality of judgment required to believe in Murray’s guilt instantly becomes pretty clear, doesn’t it? You’re welcome.
Ron Davis literally looks like Nosferatu combined with a Soyjak:
https://i0.wp.com/publicola.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Med_Ron-Davis_MG_0067-1.jpg?fit=2000%2C1389&ssl=1
I didn’t read past the byline. Fuck Ron Davis. Sanctimonious bloviating asshole.
@20 ok you got me this time
“Since Harrell took office, homicides have increased by 23 percent and rape is up by 15 percent, as of the end of 2024.”
Well the obvious solution is for you to Check your Unearned White Privilege even harder, Ron.
Wow. I really miss the glory days of Norm Rice.
I don’t know….. Ballard Commons is back. The Woodland Park Plateau is back. 12th and Jackson is still a wasteland of souls who have been stricken by addiction and the parasites who sustain their misery, but at least the city has shut down the shelter that was at 12th and Weller St, and scrubs the streets in that area down with disinfectant every morning. They apparently found the “Chinatown Stabber”. The Rainier Valley arsonist seems to have disappeared as well, so yes, life in District two – or at least our life in District two – is much better since Harrell came in and Morales took her ball and went home.
But here’s the thing: We have one-party rule, and it’s not all that effective. And I blame the Republicans.
There hasn’t been a Republican Mayor of Seattle since 1980 (Howdy “Dorm” Braman!) and that’s because they can’t field candidates that aren’t either crooks (Rossi), Bible-Addled Nitwits (too many to mention, but let’s give a nod to Our Old Pal Semi Bird) or compete numbskulls/non-entities (Loren Culp and Tiffany Smiley).
They can’t even get nutjobs like Joe Kent elected in nutjob districts like the WA 3rd district (although we’ll all be glad to know that he is once again sucking off the government’s teat in the trump administration). When all you have is crazy on one side, people get complacent on the other side. And that’s also true east of the mountains, where many times there are no democratic candidates, and when there are, the state party won’t support them.
So we’re stuck with a bunch of retreads and never-were’s running for civic positions that require administrative skills, managing a workforce in the thousands and a budget in the billions, but too many times, all the candidates want to do is posture one or two positions, and those positions are usually homeless/the addicted, and “affordability”
I’ve already expressed my disappointment in our zoning “solution” and how I think it is locking in the SFR mentality throughout the city. My fear is that Seattle will become the home of very wealthy people, with a handful of very poor people in subsidized housing that the wealthy residents will regard as picturesque “poors”
And that’s because of a lack of competition when it comes to ideas (again, I blame the Republicans for being frivolous and going for the low-hanging fruit, intellectually speaking). I want a mayor who can ensure that city services (utilities, parks, streets, and traffic flow) are delivered in a fiscally responsible and realistic manner, and who can both stand up to, and work with businesses, both large and small. I’m not seeing that in Wilson, and Harrell’s the first mayor to at least attempt that in a long time, not since we went to districts on the council. That doesn’t mean he has my vote, but I need to see a lot more from Wilson beyond the usual topics and failed proposals.
Just gaze deeply into Ron’s loving eyes… Ron CARES for you. He cares a lot! Ron LOVES you. Ron KNOWS WHAT IS BEST FOR YOU. Ron doesn’t look creepy at all, quit thinking that. Ron sees deeply and directly into YOUR SOUL. Look at that totally 150% sincere facial expression! That beaming smile, and the compassionate look in Ron’s eyes!
Ron is PROGRESSIVE, you can tell just by looking at him. Quit thinking he looks creepy, what the Hell is wrong with you? You shouldn’t think that Ron looks like a total creep, stop it! Something must be wrong with you to think that.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7_SS!,w_1360,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:best,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff5faacd7-6b7d-4e26-b473-72318275d7f3_1280x889.png
Ron doesn’t sound squeaky and wimpy at all! How dare you!! Quit thinking that!!! Ron is PROGRESSIVE!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcZEpeJoRaY
Yes, Bruce Harrell has been a big disappointment. Agreed
Katie is not a good alternative. She’s basically Sawant without a bullhorn. Seattle has tried the ‘progressive’ approach a homelessness, drug overdoses and crime skyrocketed. Regardless of Ron Davis’ blindness, Harrell has made improvements.
Catalina Vel-DuRay is the best choice Catalina: please run for mayor. You know the city. Your comments are insightful, fact-based, and clear. You would be great!
Without Catalina in the race, our choice is simple: Harrell. Yes, he’s not very smart and a touch corrupt, but Wilson would return Seattle to Sawant-type failed policies.
Or, we can vote for real change and elect Joe Mallahan. I know, The Stranger readers will freak out at that suggestion, but aren’t you getting tired of spending billions of your dollars only to see people suffering in homeless encampment, crime, overdoses, human trafficking and a high cost of living?
@27 Great comment.
@29 – Even though she insults me sometimes, I would actually vote for Catalina Vel-DuRay over any of these other gooners.
“Wonk” is a stupid word, and anyone who uses it as if it is a positive attribute should be mocked.
It would be better to use the word “wank”, at least that would be funny, and not cringe.
If Catalina were mayor, Republicans would be put to death because they’re “horrible people!”
“Ron Davis is an entrepreneur, policy wank, and past candidate for Seattle City Council.”
See? That’s a lot funnier, and more accurate too.
@34 I have the feeling that Catalina is actually a closet moderate Republican, just keeping up appearances for Slog cred.
Coolidge dollar dear, Republicans ARE horrible people. Only a horrible person would want to have people put to death for their political beliefs.
As for any mayoral qualifications, thanks for the kind words, but Seattle is basically ungovernable, and I would probably be assassinated within the first month. Also, on the list of jobs I would never want, being Mayor of Seattle is one of the top ones.
Vawoli dear, there’s no need to be nasty.
Catalina, I’m sorry I used the nasty word “wank”. Or I’m sorry I called you a “closet moderate Republican”. Whichever thing. Would still vote for you though
The only other nasty word that I’ve used here is “Progressive”
Clearly there is a lot of support for a Catalina Vel-DuRay mayoral run!
Mayor Vel-DuRay has a good ring to it. Catalina for Mayor!!!
“Seattle dear, I’m running to be your next mayor!” — CV-D’s campaign announcement, probably. And yes, I’d vote for high hair and low crime.
Wow. Bruce is one of the best lawmakers this city has had the privilege of being served by. This article blames him for stuff entirely out of his control (interest rates for example), problems and failures of the prior councils (destroying the police department, He took a shrinking department and was able to stop the bleeding, start rebuilding some trust and begin to rebuild it – more needs doing. And housing, WOW. All the warnings of the effects of for example excessive tenant protections causing losses of missing middle and single family rental housing being blamed on him, when it was predictable effect that was always going to lag a few years behind implementation of some of the policies that contributed to it. And where does this claim of violent crime spiking under harrell come from? The trends remain downward.
Nobody’s perfect, but the character assassination, misrepresentation, and ideology present in this editorial are all great reasons to vote Harrell.
@26, @37 & @38 Catalina Vel-DuRay: Whether you run for Seattle mayor or not (and I fully get why you wouldn’t), bless you otherwise for being so consistently spot on and telling it like it IS! Don’t ever stop.
All hail Catalina Vel-DuRay, the voice of reason! The world needs more like you. 🙂
@43 mad scientist: Were you around when Norm Rice was Mayor of Seattle (1990-1997)? If not, what a shame.
Rice was well liked by the majority, well respected, made Seattle a desirable and sustainable place to live, successfully served two terms and was among the best mayors the city of Seattle has ever had. Period.
Housing was affordable, traffic wasn’t the insanely congested nightmare it is now, and crime was down.
I paid $560.00 a month rent that included water, sewer, and garbage pickup for a one bedroom Ballard apartment with one indoor garage space for my car. Those good old days are long gone.
@45, edited: One small clarification: with the exception of a few car break ins at my building (though this was not Mayor Rice’s fault), I had a shitty landlord the first three years at my former residence who didn’t have a garage door installed–like, DUH! He rarely, if ever took care of anything, and mainly used the apartment building in Ballard as a tax writeoff for his Eastside business. Everything improved greatly after the original landlord finally sold the building to good, responsible people who immediately installed a garage door with remotes for all tenants, and cleaned up the yard. Mercifully, the car vandalism and break ins finally stopped. The gang members and their wannabes moved on.
Although my vehicle and I could have done well without having had to deal with car prowlers back then, Seattle was overall, a better, more sustainable place for the majority to live before the tech industry economically destroyed it. I share Catalina’s concerns about Seattle being housed by and serving only the very wealthy, with only a small percentage of people within the city living in subsidized housing, creating an escalating Dickensian environment.
This mudpile, thrown at Mayor Harrell in a desperate attempt to get something to stick before anyone notices the Stranger’s candidate has no real experience, just shows how the Stranger’s tactics, unchanged for most of a decade now, have in recent years repeatedly failed it. To pick just one patch of mud:
‘But as anyone can see, his real strategy is “sweeps first”—an expensive, cruel cascade of displacement that’s eating nearly half our shelter budget. We spend half of it—half—on sweeps. The state knows they don’t work. The county knows they don’t work. Even Harrell knows they don’t work. The point is to create an illusion of progress. It’s a show.’
As Mrs. Vel-DuRay noted @26, the situation has improved, from the point of view of citizens who actually vote. They like having their parks and sidewalks back, and they don’t care if removing the salad of human misery meets the Stranger’s impossible standards or not. The Stranger continues to demand Seattle’s citizens give up their parks until the city Solves Homelessness, just as the Stranger demands Seattle’s residents suffer violence and predation until the city Solves Crime. Neither approach has worked, and now the Stranger’s demands receive persistent opposition from voters.
(For an additional ludicrous note, Ron throws in a whine about sweeps “eating half our shelter budget,” when the Stranger has long taken the position Seattle’s congregate shelters just Aren’t Good Enough for Seattle’s choosy beggars, and therefore the homeless are fully justified in not accepting Seattle’s offers of shelter.)
Perfection is the enemy of good.
Ron wants perfection.
The Stranger wants….
This is ridiculous. He wants us to think crime got worse but all he did was cherry pick some numbers that went his way while ignoring the ones that didn’t. So while rape and murder, which are thankfully relatively rare, were up, aggravated assault and robbery were down, resulting in a net decrease in violent crime. Property crime was down also. When correcting for population growth, between 2021 and 2024 violent crime went down from 731 to 674 (per 100k) and property crime went down from 5737 to 5085, which is the lowest number since the start of the data in 2008.
His housing analysis is similarly bad. He acts like Austin did what Seattle didn’t by building properties and lowering prices. But all he did, yet again, was cherry pick a year (2023) that makes it look like his tall tale is true. Using his own source and going back 5 years, Austin’s median home price increased by 35% while Seattle’s is up 24%. He also makes the goofy assertion that following Harrell’s plan will make Seattle less affordable in 20 years than it is now. Curious about the source of this claim I clicked on the link and its… another column written by Ron Davis. Yes, he’s citing himself to “justify” his absurd claims.
And finally he cites the KUOW report on the departure of Harrell’s nepo hire niece Monisha to claim Harrell runs a “toxic” workplace, but the takeaway from that story is that 5 current and former staffers contacted the reporter, unprompted, to say that it was Monisha that was the problem, not the mayor.
The sad thing is many people will think this is an impressive bit of well sourced research when its really a bunch of nonsense that falls apart upon even cursory scrutiny. It appears Mr Davis’ ideological blinders are so thick he’s lost the ability to discern reality. Harrell has largely done what he said he would: lowered crime, removed the tents, restored the parks, and governed as a pragmatist. He is the obvious choice given his successful 1st term and the glaring inexperience of his opponent.
Harrell will win because Seattle is now center-right, not center-left anymore.
I wonder if there’s some other major difference between Austin and Seattle that Ron is oblivious to?
In Austin, Texas, sleeping outdoors, camping, and related activities in public spaces are restricted and can result in fines or other penalties. This is due to a combination of city ordinances, like Proposition B, and a statewide camping ban enacted by the state legislature.
City Ordinances:
Austin’s Proposition B and other camping ordinances prohibit sitting, lying down, or camping in public areas, particularly in downtown and near the University of Texas.
Statewide Camping Ban:
Texas law also makes it a misdemeanor to sleep outside or camp on public property, punishable by a fine.
Enforcement:
Austin has issued numerous citations for violations of these laws since 2021.
As a retired, former colleague of the inestimable Ms. Vel-DuRay I will opine that those of us who’ve involuntarily spent substantial time in City Hall explaining complex challenges to single-note elected officials rarely have any desire to join their ranks.
Gosh so many ideas, its as if Ron thinks he could run the city better. The voters had that option in 2023 and gave him a pass. We should do the same with this vapid editorial.
@51 – Thank you for mentioning this. I stopped reading when he wanted Seattle to be like Austin. Austin’s land mass and geography support new development and growth. Seattle is geographicaly constrained and we’d have to basically seize property either through eminent domain or buy out home sellers when they place their home on the market in order to build taller structures that accommodate for density. Followed by complete tear downs and building newer structures after the permit process. Then there’s the debate over which neighborhoods get up zoned. All neighborhoods should be marked for up-zoning, not just the historically Black, Asian and Latino neighborhoods.
@18,
I support this unarmed response program to the mentally ill and addicted:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/mental-health/how-king-county-is-reshaping-its-mental-health-response-system/
Note:
Only 1% of calls result in dispatch of an in-person mental health response.
2% of calls are evaluated and referred back to 911.
If there is a weapon, violence, or threat of violence, THEY WILL NOT DISPATCH mental health responders. These are the kinds of calls where the probability of use of force or deadly force by police is highest against the mentally ill or addicted. The cop doesn’t care what is causing the manifestation of physical threat, they will respond by legal standards and training, to the threat in front of them, to stop that threat.
The system in the article looks to be under-utilized. Whether it improves mental health and addiction outcomes for those suffering remains to be scene as they develop data. Whether it reduces crime and street disorder will be determined by the data.
Hopefully in 5 years it will be better utilized, the procedural and continuity of care issued worked, out and the data metrics will show the value over what we have historically done.