Comments

1

"EVIDENCE MATTERS!" is a cute example of a slogan that is completely true, and indicates you are a dick. Because of the fact that it's obviously true -- so your actual point lies in the "I have evidence, you have fake news" rider you don't have the guts to spell out for critique.

2

The City has not one, but two reports which specifically tell it not to mix the goal of housing the homeless with the goal of providing affordable housing. So of course we get this:

"...proposes spending about 66 percent of new revenue on affordable housing,"

Because the Council wanted to make extremely clear to us taxpaying voters their utter contempt for any approach to housing the homeless which might actually work. As CM Sawant stated flatly, this is all about her "movement" getting a "win" over private-sector employers, and so both the homeless and highly-paid union workers can just go suck it.

I hope Mayor Durkan vetoes this turd, and we start electing some reality-based Council Members.

3

What exactly is the City's definition of "affordable housing"?

6

aw, it just learned about the concept of hypocrisy in politics, how cute! It thinks using a monopolistic book market is somehow comparable to the outright corruption of massive campaign contributions! adorable!

7

Think of all of the oysters and champagne that will be guzzled down by the newly employed Genuine True Class Warriors if this goes through.

That’s that true resistance tip.

11

Wait people, didn't the sky already fall after the minimum wage increase was passed? How can it be falling now if it has already fallen?

14

Well 11, I was here telling you all there will be, and I’m self-quoting, “starving, shit-covered people everywhere” if 15/hr happened.

I think if the sky falls, well, are we crushed or do we die of asphyxiation?

15

The fascist bots and trolls, are out in force. Get rid of some of the stupid regulations. Setup shelter, and boadring house facilities, in less dense area of Seattle and King County.

Make it, so that working people do not have to live out-of-their cars. Almost all people, except the ones that live in tents, in the boonies, do not want to be homeless in shit seattle.

Get most of the elderly and children, off the streets.

BUT NO that would be too much, to ask of fascist asses that are posting here, and the bureaucrats, who want to punish people who cannot make the outlandish rents.

16

But this measure won't do a bit to alleviate your sophomoric anxiety.

19

I’d really like to slap the shit out of whoever taught the one Eastern European being that they are talking to robots, instead of, you know, people who got nothing for free in life.

What’s that punk ethos? It’s DIY.

20

I don’t know. In my experience, a successful compromise—particularly in Seattle—is that everybody hates it. And everybody seems to hate the shit out of this. So...it’s good? (ducks)

21

Holy shit---it's like I don't know Seattle anymore.

23

Any company with revenue that falls under this umbrella that is complaining over what is, essentially, a 25c per hour tax per employee is being disingenuous. Especially if you're a company the size of Amazon where many of your employees are making effective hourly rates in the $50+/hr range. They're effectively saying a <0.5% wage increase in the form of a tax is unfriendly to business and too much of a cross for them to bare.

I sure hope their employees don't get wind of this...next year's raises are going to be mighty slim if their CFO is pulling hair out over less than 0.5%.

24

New Seasons Market in the CD. Another one in Ballard now. Amazon has plans for six Go stores. Aldi and Lidl are thinking about jumping in. PCC is adding a store net to where there's a Trader Joes and a Fred Meyer.

The same thing happened with the minimum wage. A few who wouldn't adapt closed, but they were not long for this market anyway. A mad rush of new ventures came in. Still coming in.

I wish their wrong economic predictions would teach conservatives something.

25

This isn't the minimum wage. That policy had been tried at the state level, starting in 1999, and had a proven track record of alleviating poverty without ill effects.

This tax is a punishment on growing businesses which provide good jobs, a punishment for daring to exist in a city where the Council is now actively ignoring the very reports the city itself commissioned on how to end homelessness. It's a policy which we have tried in the past and revoked because it had failed. We have every reason to believe it will not work now.

Just because we had some people on the same sides of the minimum wage question does not make them similar policies. Thinking they are similar, based on nothing but a superficial resemblance, is exactly the type of lazy, sloppy thinking which brought us the homeless crisis we now have today.

26

@14, apparently you haven't been near 3rd and James lately, because I see starving, shit- and filth-encrusted, strung-out addicts there EVERY GODDAMNED DAY.

27

I’m still trying to figure out why Seattle and King County aren’t totally flush from the combination of the construction boom and the astronomical increases in real estate values and by extension, the property tax coffers you’d think would be over-flowing. Where is all the revenue from this windfall going to? I just don’t get it.

28

This seems like just a very elaborate and nefarious plan to solve Seattle's affordable housing problem. Get all the homeless to move to Seattle, and simultaneously scare all the jobs out to Bellevue and Redmond. Then housing prices in Seattle will stall out while all the new jobs and fewer social service on the Eastside send prices (further) into the stratosphere. Curse you, Sawant!

29

@28 Hey we live in a house on the Eastside that is way beyond our needs. If Sawant wants to increase our property value then more power to her ;).

"...and so who are you, after all? I am part of the power which forever wills evil and forever works good." -- Goethe's Faust

30

At the end of the day this is not going to solve the problem so long as the City prevents construction of more housing in general, let alone housing that is truly affordable for much of the current homeless population. Unless we're willing to pay the rent for a lot of people FOREVER, building apartments like most of what is already being built can't possibly work. Let's say we put up a bunch of one- and two-bedroom places and set them aside for low income people. Let's further say that they are going to rent for half of market rates. That is still way beyond what most of the people on the street will ever realistically be able to pay. So there would have to be major subsidies until the end of time. And the combination of NIMBYism and zoning makes it almost impossible to build apartments in most part of ton anyway.

Then look what happens if someone tries to build something different, like apodments. the city and the neighborhood it's proposed for goes ballistic. And even those won't work for the truly destitute. I have to think what we need is to bring back the Skid Row SRO hotels for the population that is never going to work or be able to rent a regular apartment. Put them in what used to be Skid Row and still have large street homeless/drunk/addicted/mentally ill street populations. Wouldn't it be better for people to be living in (admittedly crappy) SRO hotels than on the street?

31

The people who know all these big companies best, who work there, and know people who work at all of them, know that they aren't paying anywhere near their fair share. Maybe from far off you have some romanticized image of these golden corporate innovators, but up close, the ones who really know them, are showing what they really think of them. We know what bullies they are, and we know what happens when you give in to a bully. The people told the whole City Council and the Mayor to tax them more.

You can sit from far away and say how unfair it is, but maybe respect the ones who know. What's scary out there is that it's not jobs that are going to be moving from Seattle out to the rest of the country. What's going to spread is the courage to tax the rich more, and demand higher wages.

32

31, my dad, at 50+, managed to pass college algebra at the second go.

Increasing competition does not help the poor.

I understand that your idea of poor and fuck I’m hungry are two entirely different things, but they fall off the back end of the unemployment check and never show up in the numbers again.

I spent a good seven grand making mine get with it and apparently he’s working for Tesla any more.

You’ve been quite a bit more kind the past two weeks.

34

@24 New Seasons isn’t more expensive than Safeway for most things. Neither is Aldi; in fact, it’s sorta famous for being inexpensive. Like Wal-Mart level pricing. You’re only right about PCC being more expensive.

36

@jackkay This is your best work siince "227."

38

City hall caved, and passed a limpdick "compromise" that pleases nobody and does nothing except make life needlessly harder for everyone. Now everyone is going to have to pay more to a city that can't even do anything useful with that money because it's not enough to do the one thing they proposed with it.

Pathetic. If you're going to do it, do it like you mean it. If you're going to cave, cave like you mean it. The only thing more spineless than kissing ass is kissing upper back to say you aren't an ass-kisser.

40

Nobody learns from a recession or a depression. We didn't learn last time, we won't this time. Things will normalize when everyone just gets numb to having slums. In the meantime, we'll get more band-aids because city hall is worried that oh no, Amazon might do something bad to the city like stop construction. Can you imagine such a world, in which Amazon's actions would have a negative effect upon Seattle?

No backbone. Tax right or not at all. Don't come out with this chickenshit and talk about protecting a few jobs when the city is hemorrhaging its own population.

41

@31. “Their fair share”.

Jesus, you must have beat your “life’s not fair” horse to death and now it’s ok think life’s supposed to be fair again.

Also, I laughed out loud when I read “courage to tax the rich”. Good stuff, comrade. Good stuff.

44

@43:

What? Do you think social service agencies just run themselves? If the services aren't available, because there's nobody to provide them, they can't really help anyone, can they?

45

Open question, something I was thinking about on my bus ride in this morning. The impoverished/economically downtrodden white folks generally supported Trump and the GOP, isn't that the consensus thinking? So, if you found out that the white homeless people we see on the streets of Seattle were Trump supporters, would that change your opinion about helping them?

46

This is really win win! The City Council gets money to throw away with zero accountability and when it fails they can say that it was never enough to solve the problem and it's still Amazon's fault.

But prove me wrong, show me a decline in the level of homelessness in the next 18 months and I'll eat my words!!

47

@45: the Trump supporters are those whites JUST above the poverty line, who resent those on the dole (such as it is in this country), whether or not they themselves ever received assistance. the very poorest generally don't vote.

48

@42- how many homeless have you opened your house to?

49

@42 - Google “Mary’s Place.”

50

@48: tu quoque fallacy.

52

@47 In fact, Trump won the $50k-100k demographics, but lost all others. He was elected (poorly) by the middle class but somehow talking smack about poor white people wins the day.

53

@27 To be fair, I am a bit curious about this as well. So far I have not seen any real evidence presented by the right-wing corporate shills here that the homelessness crisis is due to mismanagement by the city (rather than the most obvious cause: the soaring cost of living) but the city is in fact re-assessing property diligently and jacking up property taxes every year so should indeed be pretty flush with revenue, and yet there is still a new levy every time you turn around.

54

Well, muffy, when you dumb motherfuckers stop assuming every sick person had to have made some mistake, and every poor person must have done something wrong and every rich person must be some kind of genius, then you won't need to told day after day that life is not fair.

"Good stuff, comrade". I get it. Comrade. Because COMMUNISM! Marxism! "The rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion." Oh, wait shit, that's not Marx, that's Adam Smith. He was a Marxist before it was cool I guess.

The United States has had progressive taxation for a century, during which the country did not fall into ruin, but in fact roses from just another country to a global superpower. Weird coincidence!

That's a serious mental illness. The need to believe that if you sit back and do nothing, everything will be perfect because God himself will make sure that everyone always gets what they deserve. Atheist libertardians think the laws of physics naturally make sure you can only get rich if you deserve it and you can't possibly be poor unless you fucked up. And the crazy is so powerful that you guys have to read imaginary words that aren't there and see imaginary things that aren't there and be blind to what's right in front of your face.

I don't expect you to understand any of this. I know that all the freepers tie themselves in knots and do backflips to reinterpret The Wealth of Nations to make it not say what it says. Just like they interpret a "well regulated militia" to not mean well regulated and not say anything about any militia. Words can mean anything! Remember when conservatives used to be a bulwark against nihilism? Good times.

Progressive taxation is as American as apple pie. It's normal, almost everywhere except in really distorted places like Washington. But you've become so radicalized that anyone who thinks the normal way we do taxation in the US is a "comrade" of Joe Stalin and Vladmir Lenin. You're turning into a real loon, muffy.

Life is not fair, by the way. Just thought I'd let you know.

55

@52: he lost working class & poor whites? that's news to me.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/elections/exit-poll-analysis.html

56

@ 53

The most frequent one that gets pointed to is the 2015 Poppe report, which was critical of our scattershot, low-oversight approach that lacked centralization and accountability. To oversimply the economics of it: when the State's approach is a Public-Private Partnership with 70+ nonprofits all getting funding you accumulate things like redundancies, increased transaction costs, and other forms of $$$ waste. Additionally, the report sought to separate the affordable housing issue from the homeless issue, there is/was also funding going to groups that were not exactly in line with what are considered best practices or 'evidence-based' solutions, you can read the initial report here:
https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/pathwayshome/BPA.pdf

To quote Poppe from an interview she gave: "what we found was that your community is unnecessarily complex and complicated, even more complex than it should be. The line of sight for all the homeless services is not great. It is definitely fragmented. Given the size of the problem, I would expect that within King County there would be a single person responsible to address homelessness on behalf of the county and have access to all those resources."
You can read the full interview from the quote here:
https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/11/16/psbj-interview-homelessness-expert-barbara-poppe.html

Former Stranger reproter Erica C Barnett had an interview with former Mayor Ed Murray about this last year, this quote is illustrative:
ECB: Barb Poppe did sort of say that she doesn’t consider homelessness an affordability issue—that she thinks the main problem is just that we aren’t we’re allocating our services efficiently. Do you think it’s an affordability issue?

EM: I believe it is both an affordability issue and an issue about how we’re allocating our resources. Look at our shelter system. One of the things that she pointed out is our shelter system is basically broken. We haven’t competitively bid that system in 10 years. So we just write checks. We don’t ask [providers], ‘Did Jill Smith stay stable when she left your shelter for two years?’ And then we find out we have people living in shelters for 16, 17 years, and we’re calling that housing.
You can read that full interview here:
https://thecisforcrank.com/tag/poppe-report/

And for any Alt-Socialist brigaders with your shiny new Stranger accounts who might be reading this ready to call anyone a 'fascist' because you're in a cult of personality with Sawant, why in the hell any of you think our current Public-Private Partnership situation is the preferred 'socialist' approach -- blows my mind and begs for an explanation.

57

It doesn't matter if they raise taxes by $47 million, $75 million, $150 million, or $400 million. With this city council in charge of the money, I guarantee that 5 years from now the situation will be worse than ever. Yeah, gluck with that sunset clause! What good is it to house 500 if 1000 take their place? Success shouldn't be based on numbers housed or sheltered, success should be based on how many less vagrants we have roaming the streets, period.

58

Garrett, Kshama Sawant said pretty clearly that none of this is the preferred socialist solution, and that this tax is not her preferred tax. She compromise it a compromise: "even a smaller tax is huge victory & pushback on corporate bullying. BUT imagine what our movement could've won w CM's who fought w us rather than limiting themselves to what's acceptable to big biz & establishment".

Whether you agree or disagree with any of that, the explanation for what the Sawant cultists think is right there for you if you care to read it.

I don't like Sawant (or O'Brien) all that much, but if you're going to criticize them, at least pay attention to the basic facts. I really don't like Durkan at all, but when Nikkita Oliver wildly misrepresented an innocuous remark as 'racist', the whole dialog went off the rails.

Let's all get the basic facts straight and then argue about that. The sky is blue. Two and two is four.

59

How is that tu quoque? I asked a simple question, you dumb fuck. He should be willing to do as he demands others.

60

@58

I think where we diverge is that I find statements like that to be content-free empty rhetoric. Look, does the 'movement' have an actual idea/plan about what to do that we can all examine and debate or not -- or would that be off-limits, because I've noticed we're not all on the same page when it comes to speech anymore.

If I am speaking in ignorance then I would much appreciate an education as to the concerted efforts of SA (or the individuals you have mentioned), regarding structural and organizational reforms that would result in greater efficiency within the current system, or those efforts that would otherwise resemble functional social welfare systems found elsewhere. I cannot say I have really heard of any, just a lot of 'fuck corporations' and 'tax the rich.'

At least from much of the reporting I've seen it would appear that they mostly just like to engage in shows of force and sloganeering demands for increased spending going towards the private partners of the PPPs. If it's just a 'something is better than nothing' plan, fine, but I for one could do without all the overblown BS.

61

@59 I was polite about it, and you weren't. You're the problem here.

62

@53, @56: The other of the two reports is, "Seattle/King County: Homeless System Performance Assessment and Recommendations with Particular Emphasis on Single Adults", which was released in August 2016, a month after the Poppe report. It has something (strong) to say about coupling housing the homeless with increasing the supply of affordable housing:

"However, expanded affordable housing is not a precondition for reducing homelessness. The community has to commit to making an impact on the problem with the existing housing inventory or there may never be a significant reduction. Waiting for enough housing to be produced means continuing to tolerate the current situation..."

(Words in between asterisks were italicized in the original report, which is here: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/pathwayshome/FS.pdf)

"At least from much of the reporting I've seen it would appear that they mostly just like to engage in shows of force and sloganeering demands for increased spending going towards the private partners of the PPPs."

Bingo. I would have noted they show no interest whatsoever in discovering where all of the money we have already spent has gone, and why we have a growing homeless population in spite of all our spending.

This is civic policy-making malpractice, pure and simple.

63

@61- I'm sorry. Does that assuage your butt-hurt?

64

@62 So you are saying that they commissioned this report and have numerous recommendations and they are acting on none of them? Do you know this for a fact or are you just asserting this based on no particular knowledge because it backs up your argument? Does certainly appear that Seattle is doing worst among the benchmark cities mentioned in the report (even SF!). Of course it is very likely that we have experienced the fastest cost of living increase of any city in the country over the last half decade. I'm inclined to think that part of the solution (to the extent that there is any solution) will involve spending more, regardless of how efficiently current resources are being managed. For one thing, the city should be building much more public housing.

65

@60

You don't have to go read some 4,000 page manifesto. Just get the Twitter. If you don't have it just ask your grandson. If you want to know what somebody's position is, it's right there.

I don't speak for them, but the SA goal is public control of the things that are profoundly critical to the basic quality of people's lives. Like whether they have clean water or not, or what Microsoft or Vulcan decides to do this morning on a whim. I'm sure there's a detailed manifesto somewhere. But what matters for you and me is that they are a minority in a Democratic controlled town. They know that. They know they don't call all the shots.

They have only a small sliver of power, and people like Sawant use what little influence they have to tip the direction of things in a direction that increases equality, alleviates some of the poverty in our midst, and adds to the burden of the filthy rich.

I realize Kshama Sawant is a bit of a loon. Granted. Or at least she is committed to flamboyant, disruptive tactics that can get to be a bit much, to say the least. But you do have to admit, she has achieved a hell of a lot of the things on her wish list for somebody with next to no power.

Whatever you think about that that, you have to admit that her degree in economics is not for nothing. She knows how negotiation works. If you want 10 you don't ask for 10, you ask for 20 and compromise at 10. That's why she keeps asking for outlandish things like $15 per hour. She has a record of moving the ball forward.

Or remember when that dumbfuck rube Tim Burgess, an ex-cop who doesn't understand money, went and negotiated a deal to sell the old public safety building land for a mere $16 million, plus $6 million in empty promises? And nobody bothered to ask if that was a good idea, until Kshama Sawant heard about it and said WHAT THE FUCK? It was only due to her that we found out that Burgess knew damn well that the land had been appraised at $45 to $55 million. So he waved his hands and said really the maybe $25 million the city is getting is only part of it. We also get a $25 million more, in intangible shit that makes it really worth $50 million. Really. Hard to put a price on it but Tim says it's probably worth at least that much, maybe not in the kind of dollars you have in your pocket, but the kind of dollars we have in our hearts. Or something.

Everybody bought that bullshit except Sawant. People demanding fiscal accountability should be paying closer attention. You might hate socialists, but one thing about them is they really care about money. We have a lot of leaders who don't want to do the math.

66

@64: Read the comments @2, @56, and @62 again. Better yet, read the two reports cited in those comments, and compare to the City Council’s action here. The Council is actively contradicting the advice for which we have repeatedly paid good money. They are spending money intended for housing the homeless on affordable housing. This directly contradicts the advice given in the reports, and will (if anything) delay the day when all of our homeless get housed.

“I'm inclined to think that part of the solution (to the extent that there is any solution) will involve spending more,”

That also contradicts the report cited @62, which said (less than two years ago) that we could house all of our homeless population without additional spending.

“...regardless of how efficiently current resources are being managed.”

Again, one point of both reports is that we need to manage our current resources more efficiently.

67

You know what’s “efficient?”

You working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 1/2 the pay with no vacation until you drop dead.

Many systems that are “efficient” are inhumane, cruel, brittle, maladaptive, and don’t achieve lasting results.

“Efficiency” is a mindless aphorism in this context. What the fuck does it even mean to be efficient when the goal is keeping impoverished human beings - families - from sleeping in ditches and dying in the street in one of the wealthiest cities in history or planet earth?

What does that mean?

Efficiency isn’t always the best metric when we’re speaking of the causes of human problems that are difficult to precisely quantify.

Efficiency and balance sheet thinking don’t make societies happier or achieve greatness.

68

@65

I am in fact much more ambivalent about Sawant (and so-called 'socialist' policies generally -- we're on the same page with that property fiasco btw) than perhaps you realize. It is unfortunate that the last paragraph in my initial post seems to have drawn so much of your attention. The substance of my post was in response to Rhizome asking if there was anything to support claims of mismanagement (that and the repeated screeching on slog about 'fascists' seems ridiculous to me).

The reports claim that mismanagement has been a very real problem, especially with regards to this particular issue. It isn't simply a fabrication by the 'right-wing' easily dismissed.

This is Seattle. There are more advanced degrees per capita than just about anywhere else in the USA. I'm not going to go gaga over someone just because they have an Econ degree from NC State whose PhD thesis was about pension plans in rural India. It's not like the 'movement' is exactly swamping the arena with economic arguments anyway -- it's mostly just been plays to the limbic system.

And yeah, I might just be an old queer who doesn't use twitter, but I do know that the best economists spend a lot of time considering unintended consequences, they don't have some blind adherence to worn-out ideas like historicism, and they show, their, work.

69

@67: Dude, don't let a common (if admittedly polysyllabic) english word kick your ass so pitifully hard.

"What the fuck does it even mean to be efficient when the goal is keeping impoverished human beings - families - from sleeping in ditches and dying in the street in one of the wealthiest cities in history or planet earth?"

It means the funds raised via taxes and spent on the homeless problem will permanently re-house as many of those human beings as can be rapidly accomplished, and get working on long-term solutions for permanently housing the rest. You know, totally unlike our current, fragmented non-system of multiply redundant service providers, no-bid shelter contracts, and unknown outcomes -- the system which is costing us plenty dollars as our homeless populations rises. The system at which this punish-the-employers-for-hiring tax throws most of the resultant money at the wrong target (affordable housing) and will likely waste the rest in the way it's been grandly wasted for years.

You're welcome. Glad I could help. Learn to read.

70

@65/66/68: THis will sound smarmy, but I have to thank you for your comments. References, history, insight, decent responses (to one another) -- that have helped me start to understand this issue better. I really wish Amazon and the city council, in whatever pitched battle of aggro-ideology they've inflamed, would be more thoughtful. When will Seattleites demand a higher LEVEL of conversation? I just don't hear it.

71

@70: Thank you. It is so frustrating to watch the evidence-free debate in our City Council as the very reports we've commissioned go unread and unheeded. If I thought for even one hot second this tax would enable the permanent re-housing of some of our homeless neighbors, I'd be willing to entertain it. But there's just no evidence to support that hope. (I wasn't kidding when I used the word "malpractice," either. Medical doctors are forbidden from prescribing a treatment if that treatment has been shown ineffective in enough cases. We need to demand the same of our failed public policies, which in this case is also killing people.)

"When will Seattleites demand a higher LEVEL of conversation? I just don't hear it."

Agreed. I hope we will soon begin electing reality-based City Council members.

72

I wonder if some of the homeless drug addicts and the crime that goes with them will leave my suburb for the greener pastures of Seattle?

73

Shite, men, womyn and trannies, that story made Nazinal news!! ( what with major Corporate-Welare KKKing Jeff Bozo lookin' for more underpayed Prole monies . . . .--- https://www.corporatewelfare.org & https://www.ctj.org & https://www.inequality.org ) Pah!


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