For the entire long, dreary stretch of the Homelessness Crisis, the Stranger has misled readers toward believing it was primariy a housing-affordability crisis. Now, local government officials are setting policy to reality: homelessness is driven primarily by mental disorders. Hopefully, the Stranger can now finally admit this obvious reality, and become part of the solution, instead of prolonging the problem.

If not, well, welcome to the world of the Stranger. It's where government officials tell the truth, and a self-proclaimed independent journalistic outlet is full of lies.

Dow’s presser may have been in response to this week’s open letter from eleven south King County mayors (see B-town blog for Burien news). The letter laments increased crime and drug use, and the lack of resources to respond to this crisis.

Dow and Harell have been major players in Seattle politics for over a decade. The homelessness, crime and mental health crisis we are experiencing is their responsibility to fix. Don’t whine about Davison not showing up when she’s been in office less than a year. It’s plain dumb. She’s not the one who let these issues fester.

Instead, why not consider why Seattle’s more tenured elected officials have failed so miserably for so long. And when I say “failed” I mean absolute incompetence. Every day there are more and more Unhoused people in every neighborhood with no hope of achieving stability. Pretending these people aren’t committing crimes or bringing disruption to the community is half this paper’s job. The other half is pretending Stranger endorsed candidates have done anything but fail at fixing the problem. These candidates have certainly read all the right books, but nobody on the Stranger’s staff seems interested in asking what they’ve actually delivered? Dow has had plenty of time to think about solutions here….

An announcement that doesn’t involve any funding sounds like a bullshit “we’re pretending to do something” photo op to me, but I’m not the journalist so what do I know…. It’s Ann’s fault. Fuck her for demanding cops arrest people for ….. crime….