Comments

1
Thank God!
5
I'm sure those folks pushing overflowing carts full of shit have very important uses for all of those things.
6
Have you ever had a conversation that got into somebody's shopping cart full of shit? I have, and it was... an odd mixture from my POV. Definitely a substantial amount of comprehensible possessions, some ragged but better than nothing. And some stuff that looked like trash to me but was handled deliberately. Not sure, I wasn't interrogating her.

I can see how a city bureaucracy wouldn't know what to do with that type of blend, but it does have value to the owner.

I'd love to see the Stranger report on what exactly the city process is and how it works out in practice. Follow some people through it.
7
@6: Did you click the link in @2?

It's admirable to empathize with a human being's loss of a possession, but not at the expense of a city's right to function and its citizens to live without the mountains of [insert nuanced nouns here] this is really a health hazard way out of control.

It has nothing to do with bureaucracy.
8
@6 A sane view.

This is a debate that I haven't noticed in SF even as we have been debating tents exhaustively. What's going on in Seattle? If the city is walking up and seizing property from people's actual hands...I think we can all agree that awful.

If stuff is being left by the side of the road...well I wouldn't leave a jacket in the park while I ran off to do whatever and expect it to still be there when I came back. It shouldn't be the city's job to guess what someone is going to come back for. If just left stuff eventually ends up somewhere. In SF, that somewhere is usually in the bay.
9
@7 I think you should consider those pictures anecdotal.
10
@9: Those pictures reflect your second paragraph in @8. You cannot cavalierly pass that off as anecdotal.
11
@5 and @6 Possession of a stolen shopping cart is Class 2 felony. Re: RCW 9A.56.010 (13) Any items found within that cart is subject to confiscation, just like anything they find in a stolen car is subject to confiscation, any drugs found within that shopping cart is subject to prosecution.
12
Just got my property tax increase for the light rail. Won't be making any more charitable donations.
13
Several years ago, I worked at a shelter at 3rd & Virginia and we used to store homeless folks possessions on a case by case basis. The shelter was open every day with minimal requirements for entry and we'd see 300-400 folks a day. We could fill up a back room with bed bug infested, wet & rotting "possessions" in less than a week.

Every client always promised to retrieve their stuff, but it rarely happened. I hated to throw out anything, but honestly it was such a safety hazard after a while. We would remind folks to get their shit, but would usually get the scattered junkie excuses & promises.

Sad truth is, the majority of homeless folks are addicts and/or mentally ill, which makes it nearly impossible to find a solution in helping these vulnerable populations manage basic life skills in a long term, sustainable and meaningful way.

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