O'Brien can start packing.

@1: Yeah, it had nothing to do with Seattle’s population becoming larger than Boston’s.

Or do you believe Boston is not a liberal, tax-and-spend city?

@1, the tax increase we have seen over the last few decades pales in comparison to affordability/cost of living challenges brought to you by runaway capitalism. Yeah, property taxes have gone up several thousands of dollars per years, but home prices have gone up hundreds of thousands of dollars. Rent has increased threefold since I moved here 20 years ago. Etc etc. Your complaints about taxes are misplaced.

@1, we could trim our tax bills by a few hundred by doing away with the nice things, but then we’d live in an overpriced city without any nice things.

I wish my fellow-citizens up in District 6 the best of luck in dealing with a candidate who actually knows something about the problems for which he intends to legislate, because they have not had that in many years:

‘He called the head tax “overly simplistic” because it failed to account for the root causes of homelessness, which aren’t just the cost of living and a lack of housing but, he says, also mental illness, trauma, and substance abuse, something he saw frequently practicing community medicine.’

Any attempt to house our entire homeless population will fail without this understanding, which is obvious to everyone with actual experience of homeless persons. CM O’Brien totally lacks Dr. Fathi’s informed perspective on this issue, and so I hope Dr. Fathi (or someone with his valuable insight) will replace CM O’Brien.

"...also mental illness, trauma, and substance abuse"

This is straight out of the talking points of Safe Seattle and the gang of alt-right kooks that think District 6's council seat is supposed to be used for lobbying Olympia and Washington D.C. for money. And micromanaging where the SPD sends patrol cars.

Ever notice how "mental illness" is the conservative go-to non-solution whenever gun violence comes up? They present it as if it's their alternative to the actual problem of, you know, fucking guns. But they never follow that with any specific thing. Trump and the Republicans in congress held undisputed power for the last two years, and didn't do fuck all about this mental illness problem they claim is at the heart of our off-the-charts gun deaths. "Mental illness" is just filler words that come out of their mouths while they sit on their hands.

And mental illness is at the heart, conveniently, of homelessness. Who knew! What is a city council member going to do about mental illness? Pass single payer healthcare? Add more beds at Eastern State Hospital? Even the right wingers whose actual job includes funding mental health care won't fund that. Resulting in doing fuck all nothing. Status quo. The critical detail about Fathi is that he doesn't see a real problem with society or how it functions. The defects lie with the victims of homelessness, their mental state, their drug problems, and with big government. The "natural order" of things, the capitalist free market, is not the problem, cannot be the problem.

It's because conservatives think life is fair.

Substance abuse. Sounds good except what do they want to do about it? Purely a punitive approach, make drug users suffer as much as possible, or imprison them. They want the most Nixonian drug war they can manage. They think the drug war was a success. You know how Trump thinks people crossing the border from Mexico dying in the desert is a feature, not a bug? They think the massive carnage and collateral damage of the drug war was part of the beauty of it. Helps teach the the kids to just say no. Fathi ain't going to increase tax revenue, which means he sure as hell isn't going to fund any meaningful substance abuse solutions. Look for a cute little pilot program that works magic for, like, three guys. Plus cops. Lots and lots of cops.

Math says the drug war didn't make any kids just say no, but conservatives don't believe in math. They believe life is fair. They don't believe bad things happen to good people. Bad things only happen to bad people. The more homeless people get kicked in the ribs by cops, driven over the city limits to be harassed by suburban cops until they get pushed over their city limits, into -- who cares? the wilderness? Canada? -- the more they will learn the beautiful lesson that it's all their fault and they should stop being so lazy and addicted.

“Lack of coordination”: one of the reasons conservatives don't fund anything is that they think you can manage your way to greatness. If only they'd run everything like a business, we could give everyone a tax cut and eradicate all life's ills. Well not really eradicate. More like sit back and cheer as people suffer their well deserved consequences for whatever they did to deserve to not be an upper middle class middle aged white male with a 15,000 square foot Colonial Revival. The main problem with that is that Fathi can'f fucking manage shit. He tried that once and got his ass handed to him.

No wonder this is Tim Burgess's guy. Jay Fathi thinks life is fair. He came to cut taxes and chew gum, and he's all out of gum.

Next!

@10: “This is straight out of the talking points of Safe Seattle ...”

Then I guess their talking points are valid, having been confirmed by a medical doctor with personal experience treating the homeless.

“And mental illness is at the heart, conveniently, of homelessness. Who knew!”

Anyone who has ever observed the behaviors of homeless persons? Seriously, have you not been to downtown Seattle any time in decades? All you accomplished with that (non) rhetorical, poorly-punctuated question was confirm (for anyone somehow still in doubt) that you don’t even have the minimal knowledge required to comment on this topic.

“What is a city council member going to do about mental illness?”

Legislators set policy and appropriate money to pay for said policy. Now that you know such things, you can see how our City Council could have made mandatory screening and treatment for mental illness a requirement for all users of shelters. This could have helped a great deal in starting treatments for our local homeless population.

“Pass single payer healthcare? Add more beds at Eastern State Hospital?”

Dude, inpatient or nothing is so fifty years ago. All you accomplished with those rhetorical questions was confirm (for anyone somehow still in doubt) that you don’t even have the minimal knowledge required to comment on this topic.

“Substance abuse. Sounds good except what do they want to do about it?”

Um, provide treatments?

How exactly do you expect a person with mental-health and/or substance-abuse issues to become and remain stably housed without treatment? Look all over Ballard; you can see persons who persistently choose alcohol or heroin instead of a roof.

“The main problem with that is that Fathi can'f fucking manage shit. He tried that once and got his ass handed to him.”

Well then, it’s his bad luck O’Brien has dropped out, because what did we get for all of the money O’Brien voted for homeless issues? More homeless. We could have had that for free.

And O’Brien couldn’t manage to notice this, not even with a room full of his neighbors telling him so.

At least this guy hasn’t taken a firm stance against all upzones yet. All the other candidates for district 6 make “neighborhood character” and fighting the evil developers a central piece of their platforms. That’s a lot easier to do when your sitting in your Ballard house watching it’s evaluation on Redfin skyrocket every year. Yes it sucks when one of the small affordable triplexes gets demolished to build some more luxury units, but those places will not stay remotely affordable unless more apartments get built. Expand the urban villages or better yet do away with single family zoning all together. Seattle is no longer a suburban backwater.

@12: While I don’t live in a single-family home, I can understand why folks in Ballard would oppose universal upzoning. They’ve recently experienced an increase in population density, and it was crazy people literally shitting on their neighborhood. They petitioned their City Council Member to redress their grievances, and he insultingly lied to them about what was happening. It’s little wonder they’re clinging to promises of no change.

As a matter of practical politics, demanding universal upzones is very costly, with little hope of success. Meanwhile, as NIMBYs will say, there are many undeveloped parcels within walking distance down MLK. Build multi-family and affordable housing where mass transit already exists, rather than trying to force it onto car-dependent neighborhoods.