Despite the homelessness "crisis" Seattle's mayors do everything they can to prevent any alleviation. They're just the same as republicans, making sure that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.

Sweeps maintain our public health and safety.

But do sweeps maintain the health and safety of the people being swept? I feel like they don't since a lot of their belongings gets thrown away.

get*

4- Their belongings are held for a period of time for reclaiming.

"Their belongings are held for a period of time for reclaiming"

Oh Phoebe, you and your non-hysterical facts. Next you'll tell us they are given 72 hours warning and offered a range of housing and services, which most (90% in the first 6 months of this year) refuse.

@9 why would anyone want to live in a place that won't let them shoot up or drink themselves into a coma? God, you really are a neo Nazi fascist!

@11:

Right, because if a person has the resources to afford to own or rent they can do those things in private where you don't have to see them - and you'd be just fine with that, wouldn't you? I mean, it's a free country and all, and people shouldn't be told by the PC "nanny state" what's good or bad for them.

In short: it's not WHAT they're doing that burns your pasty white conservative asses, it's that they have the brazen temerity to do it right out in the open where you can't look away and pretend it doesn't exist.

Donna Brazile (former DNC chair) explains how Hillary Clinton controlled the DNC finances before her nomination, and essentially used the DNC to launder money away from the DNC and to her campaign:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/…

@13: outrageous! impeach her.

"it's that they have the brazen temerity to do it right out in the open where you can't look away and pretend it doesn't exist."

Not at all. Whenever I see bums in parking, drinking all day, I warn my kids that's what happens if they don't take responsibility for their choices in life and blame others for their problems.

Problem is, we have so many bums in Seattle, I have to make that point all too often.

Typo:

"Whenever I see bums in the park...."

"Navigation Team made more than 5,800 contacts with people living in homeless encampments between February and late October, according to data the city provided to The Seattle Times. At least 581 people accepted referrals to safe shelter spaces"

Yep, only 10% accept the carrot.

No doubt the fact that 90% of the homeless on the streets prefer it that way is because shelters don't have proper goose down pillows. Oh, the injustice!

This has your right wing, white asses, Roger and Pheobe in a dither doesn’t it? You do not know what you are talking about but this doesn’t stop you.

Maybe brain transplants would help.

@14: You should read the article, it is quite interesting.

@12: It's neither conservative nor liberal to want our city streets free of illegal behavior and camping. Please don't conflate what you see as social "payback" for what the rest of us see as just wanting a viable city to work and live in.

It has nothing to do with class or race. Seattle is only in this mess because of one simple factor: there's not enough affordable housing because there's not enough land to develop.

NYC had the same issues. But people there are far more level-headed about tacking big city problems.

@20: I did. I can read good. I even read an article on that Antifa = NAMBLA horseshit that polluted Slog yesterday: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/…

@7 If they're lucky. I've read the stories where it just goes in the trash. We're off the topic though, we need solutions not status quo.

#21 " Nothing to do with class and race. “

When it has everything to do with it. Plenty of housing for the rich but not for the rest of us.

A brain transplant might not help.

@18 & 21 So what would you do to help homeless people get off the street? You seem to know the problem so well.

@22: Thank you for sharing, although I have no idea how that connects at all.

"This has your right wing, white asses"

All the bums in my 'hood are white.

"Plenty of housing for the rich but not for the rest of us."

You're posting from under a bridge?

Maybe resume development would be a better use of your time.

@24: Yes, prices go up. Driven by supply and demand, not race. So if a POC gets a job at Amazon, and can afford a new condo - it's not racial. It's not necessarily class either, as anyone with a good education with desirable skills has a shot here.

If you want things more equitable, then you need a different society entirely.

A simple solution to homelessness is for the city council toast up compulsory billeting of the homeless into the houses of the homed.

@25: I wish I had the answers. Nothing like this could change overnight. Good citizens can speak their minds about law and order and public safety and also help with charities and organizations that are helping alleviate the suffering of the homeless.

#28 You poor thing you can’t get passed the word “bums” can you? The real bums are the crooked bankers and Trump supporters who leech off of us. You keep calling the people at the bottom bums which is the easy way out. What made you so insensitive? It makes you feel better to kick people when they are down? Or are you just a plain bully? And I’m turning you off.

Brain transplant won’t help it seems.

The concept of a "heads tax" for employers is one the silliest ideas. Penalizing employers for having employees is so smart. Kinda makes them want to take their jobs and go elsewhere. Boy, that will sure solve our housing crisis. Plenty of cheap housing in Detroit.

#31 Phoebe my dear, solutions are being offered. Ever heard of the Housing First program?
It is being done in other cities with great success. Economic disaster and other disasters cause people not to have decent shelter. You can investigate this yourself on the internet.

Criminalizing poor people doesn’t work. They are just as good as you by the way.

#33 Taxes are not a penalty and businesses should be happy to give a minuscule amount back to the communities from which they employ people and receive subsidies. Furthermore, American citizens should not have to suffer because corporations keep finding ways to prevent having to pay them. That's anti-American.

@34: Supporting the city in its sweeps is not "criminalizing the poor".

#36 It is brutalizing the poor. Ever witnessed one? I have.

Cary Moon will lose this election on the single issue of allowing the homeless to continue camping in Seattle parks. Honestly they are the same in most other respects. The vast majority of Seattle voters, myself induced, do not want the trashing of our public spaces to continue. I hope Jenny Durkan takes this as precedent to clean up out city and get the homeless off the streets first, before any other measures are taken,

#36 Moving people around is not solving anything for you. A humane approach is better for us all. It can be done. The city has been punitive. People have died. A new approach is needed. Let us move on to better solutions. These sweeps do not work unless you are for genocide.
Lets provide compassion for our fallen and traumatized neighbors. We can start making the city a better place for you and me.

#38 Keenan we want to get the people off the streets too. But these sweeps are not the way.
It can be done in a humane way. And that is what advocates are working on.

Bares repeating for the reality-disinclined:

"Navigation Team made more than 5,800 contacts with people living in homeless encampments between February and late October, according to data the city provided to The Seattle Times. At least 581 people accepted referrals to safe shelter spaces"

Yep, only 10% want to be housed. The rest don't to follow any "rules".

"would be to abdicate our obligation to maintain a safe and peaceful city.
...for some people. Sweeps, of course, are not safe or peaceful to those being swept.
Being poor and being contacted the police is usually a pretty bad experience. Oh, and also getting your stuff thrown away. Just keep on keeping 'em down! I don't yet believe that things are "held for reclaiming". They definitely didn't used to be. And who is doing the holding? The police? Yet another potentially terrible interaction.

I'm glad to see all you compassionate types who have no better solutions except "sweep them away!", and have not seriously looked into the meagre solutions that are there.

I think the city should provide regular trash and porta-potty service to encampments,. and generally follow the Share/Wheel autonomous encampment model, except allow longer stays on the land they camp on. The city could provide free P.O. boxes as well.

As to Mr. What's repeated "bums" comments... isn't it funny how the homeless population kind of exploded right around the time of the Great Recession and it's aftermath? Do'ya ever wonder if those two events might be... I don't know... correlated? Even causative?

Did you know that over 640,000 people in the USA go bankrupt from medical bills every year? How many people in, say, all of Europe? Well, none.

Our system shows little compassion, puts little effort in helping other people, and throws everyone to the mercies of corporations.. who care only about profits. With Trump Inc. having ascended the throne, most vestiges of the Public Sector actually working for and benefiting the public is being shredded.

Is that an American value? What are your American values? Do any of Roger or Phoebe or mistral care to articulate what our American Values are? Maybe we should start there.

If we move beyond the illusion of non-intervention — the idea
that there is some natural fiscal and/or monetary policy that doesn’t
involve policy choices — then we realize that we decide, as a matter of policy, whether to have an economy with high or low levels of unemployment. The decision in the United States and most other wealthy countries over the last four decades has been to maintain relatively high levels of unemployment.

This policy has been seen most directly in the explicit decision by the Federal Reserve Board and other central banks to focus mainly, or even exclusively, on keeping inflation low. This is a sharp shift from prior decades, when central banks saw one of their main functions as promoting high levels of employment.

Rigged:How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer By Dean Baker. Published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, D.C.

The homelessness crisis is a direct result of 4 decades of "tax cuts for the rich & corporations". Starting with Reagan's "trickle-down" economics, we've seen a continual upward motion of money going from the lower tiers of society, to the richest. "Trickle-down" was a bag of moldy cheese balls sold to the electorate as gold. It was untrue and remains untrue.

The increasing desperation in the lower 3/5ths of our society is a direct result of using the government to suck money away from the citizenry, and giving it to the already-rich.

The solution is quite simple: Tax the rich and the corporations properly, and then literally give the money in monthly disbursements, directly to those without it. À la "guaranteed basic income" style. Give enough money to everyone so that they can afford food and housing in their particular market.

Do this for all homeless people, and we will see homelessness shrink rapidly.

Also, extra benefit, since poorer people spend the money they have (while rich fucks hoards it off-shore), the ensuing velocity of that money going to needed goods and services will kick in the engines of the economy again, producing growth. Whereas tax cuts for the wealthy incur a well-known drag on the economy.

Have any questions about that? Check out any of the guaranteed minimum income pilot programs already happening around the world. People get housed & fed. People take risks and start new businesses. People in desperate situations suddenly have options to find their own solutions.

US fiscal policy is driving the unemployment & homelessness crises. We can (theoretically) change that policy to benefit people. Let's give people a hand up out of the well of desperation.

Isn't that an American value?

@42: Meaningful help is not measured by how compassionate we feel, but by being able to actually assist others. It does no good by allowing the repercussions to just keep accumulating up from illegal encampments on our roadways and parks.

A paper from the IMF noted the upward redistribution of the last four decades and, based on differences in propensities to consume, calculated that annual consumption is now 3.5 percent lower as a result of the upward redistribution of income over the last four decades (Alichi et al. 2016).

Since consumption is 70 percent of GDP, if taken at face value the paper’s findings mean that consumption demand has fallen by roughly 2.5 percentage points of GDP due to the upward redistribution of income.

"US fiscal policy is driving the unemployment & homelessness crises. "

Unemployment in Seattle is historically low, 3.2%, and homelessness is down national 17% in the past decade.

@44 - Then propose something concrete.

@46 - Go talk to Seattle's homeless people. Ask how they got there. Ask what they want and need to get out. Then propose something concrete.

Letting people sleep in tents in unsanctioned camps will not do anything to prevent homeless from dying. They need to accept shelter and services and the Navigation Teams are helping more and more homeless get the shelter and services they need. Let them keep doing their jobs and use the dollars from the unsuccessful non-profits that are supposed to be "helping" the homeless to do it.

Also, why should Seattle City Government be paying for every homeless person who comes here to be housed? This is not a good policy - all cities and Washington State - for that matter should be helping to pay for homeless services, not just Seattle.

I also find it silly to say that you point out that most homeowners in Seattle are White. That's no surprise because most people in Seattle are white.

Urquhart and Burgess both on the way out. Thank the gods and goddesses.

@39 "People have died" - yes people have died - they have died being murdered by other homeless living in the camps, they have died from drug overdoses doing drugs in the camps, they have died being hit by cars that drove off the freeway into their unsanctioned camps, they have died from the cold in the camps and they have died in RV fires in unsanctioned camps - need I say more? Unsanctioned camps are inhumane and unsafe. The city does have a plan and the Navigation Teams are doing a good job meeting with people and getting them into shelter and into a safer place than the camps.