News Dec 15, 2022 at 10:23 am

There Are No RV Safe Lots, but That Doesn’t Stop the City from Pushing the Same RV Residents around Again and Again

This is what your "removals" look like. HK

Comments

1

The city is not failing to house these people. The country has a problem and that problem is falling disproportionately on the cities - particularly the affluent coastal cities with temperate climates (which Seattle is, about ten months out of the year)

If they "declare war", that war is not going to be on the mayor. It will be on the citizens, and the citizens will not put up with that. They will lose that war, badly, and no one will be the victor.

2

“People are going to retaliate. It’s going to be a war between the homeless and the Mayor or whoever the hell else is making this worse.“

Having abused Seattle’s hospitality and then refused Seattle’s shelter offering, she’s now threatening violence against Seattle’s duly-elected Mayor?

Sweep, sweep, and sweep again, until Seattle’s citizens can live without this open threat of violence in their neighborhoods.

3

“A little more than a week prior” an outreach worker warned them that the location would be cleared “on the second Tuesday of the month…”

And yet when the second Tuesday arrives, an RV owner was nowhere to be found?

Sounds like a case of ‘maybe if I’m not there, they will give me a pass.’ That, or an abandoned vehicle that needs to be hauled away…

In any case, ‘needing more time’ is BS.

4

I’m in favor of enforcing laws on the books created by officials who were elected by Seattleites, especially when due notice is served. That’s how democracy works. There must be legitimate RV parks/campgrounds somewhere?

6

@5 Agree. It's surprising how her articles make the homeless appear even less sympathetic.
"in no other neighborhood would every resident get evicted for one of their neighbor’s wrongdoings"
Uh - they are not a neighborhood. They do not pay taxes for the land or pay for utilities or take care of their yard or anything that happens in neighborhoods.
"Mary said she wished she had more time" but she said that she usually stays the day till the sweep anyway so which is it? Besides they were notified many days ahead of time.
"It’s going to be a war between the homeless and the Mayor or whoever the hell else is making this worse".............................................I don't even know what to say about this. Threats of war. Because you're homeless and don't like having to follow rules....................Wow.

The police actually seem like they were fairly respectful. They could've arrested the "sweep support organizer".

8

When I was growing up, we read stories about India. "The poorest country in the world".
People sleeping in doorways.
People forced to live on the street.
Nowhere for people to live.
The very definition of a "Hell-Hole".

Welcome to India.

9

@8, thanks, Columbus

10

LOL Hoooo boy...

11

There is a person who parks partially in front of our house in a bourgeois West Seattle neighborhood pretty much nightly. He (presumably he) occupies a someone beat up van with out-of-state license plates. He moves at least every other day, leaves no piles of garbage or wooden pallets or stolen bicycles around, and is in short a pretty good neighbor. Nobody on our block complains to the police about this persons presence. If the RV occupants observed the three day parking rule and avoid creating squalor I think they would not experience any difficulties from the city.

12

There have been numerous RV encampments that have actively blocked SFD access to fire hydrants and have been hostile to our personnel when we’ve asked them to make room for access. We’ve had people assaulted even when we were called to come help someone. Sweep ‘em!

13

@5/6 spot on. I'm assuming Hannah's intent with these pieces is to engender sympathy for the plight of these
"communities" but every time I read one I lose what little tolerance I have left for our "unhoused neighbors" featured in these stories. To be clear not every homeless person should be viewed in this light but this collection of characters Hannah interviews are not the poster children she or TS seems to think they are. You got the guy selling stolen shit down on 3rd and Pine, Pedro "Cuba" the urban gardener who built a farm behind a Home Depot and now these victimized souls who are ready to go to war with someone because they are owed a free place to park their crappy vehicles. Keep up the stories, they will all be great fodder for the election next year.

14

Not one kudos yet on this article.

15

The original rationale for allowing unsanctioned encampments, and for RVs to park for illegal lengths of time, was that “our neighbors” had been driven into the street by rising rents, and they just needed some patience, understanding, and help to obtain stable, permanent housing again.

Then-Mayor Murray declared a “Homelessness Crisis” in 2015. In the five years before his declaration, Seattle had experienced low inflation, rising minimum wages, rising salaries, falling unemployment, and thousands of new units added to local housing stock. What in those economic conditions suggested Seattle was heading for a homelessness crisis?

Since that declaration, Seattle has spent half a billion dollars on homelessness. The situation has not improved. Again, why not?

Finally, why are people sitting in RVs in one of the most expensive cities in the entire country, stubbornly staying within Seattle after every sweep, repeatedly ignoring Seattle’s parking laws? Why not go to any other city or town in Washington state, or a neighboring state? Compared to Seattle, the costs of housing and living are lower in every one of those places. Yet persons who have vehicles stay in Seattle. Why?

It’s difficult to believe any of this has a purely economic explanation.

17

Before they redid the West Seattle Freeway, there were dozens of RV's parked under it. It was a good spot for them as they were partially sheltered from weather, but City Light had to beef up security and fencing because of all the theft. I used to leave my car unlocked in the parking lot so that they wouldn't break the windows, but I drove an old Volvo in those days.

18

Move them.

To Shilshole Avenue. On the old railroad tracks, the cyclists god-given missing link in the Burke-Gillman trail. Let these two factions fight it out. I'll get the popcorn.

19

@17: I seem to recall at least one fire in that particular encampment.

21

City-provided RV lots are a good idea. Of course the incentive to move there would mostly be not wanting to get towed.

22

Intended Consequences dear, City-provided RV lots are a good idea until you start to spot them. They need to be near services, or at least transit, but no residential neighborhood wants them (nor are there lots that big), and land in the industrial districts is too valuable.

There's only so much city-owned land that can be dedicated to housing people, and most of that is already spoken for.

24

As numerous other commenters have above noted, it’s more than a bit amusing to read such negative coverage of homeless persons here in the Stranger, which routinely and belligerently takes the side of the homeless (or, at least, those who profit from homeless response) over absolutely everybody else in Seattle.

Expanding on what @23 wrote, it may simply be that after years of homelessness crisis, everyone in the local homeless population who was willing and able to accept aid has done so, leaving the hard-core rejectionists and persons with severe mental disorders to continue living rough for free. Now they’re getting swept, and expressing anger at their party finally ending.

Seattle may have nothing left to do but sweep all remaining encampments, disband the overbuilt and ineffectual homeless-industrial complex, and spend the money on schools, bridges, roads — and housing for people who actually work in Seattle, and who contribute to Seattle’s communities.

25

We are continually told by Hannah that all the shelter offers are unacceptable, but we are never told what an acceptable form of shelter would be to the persons who continually refuse offers. Why?
All their stuff is on wheels, they could literally move to anywhere in the country with cheaper cost of living. Say, an RV park in bumfuck Missouri. Yet they continue to slum it on the streets. Why?

26

@25: For years, the Stranger stuck to CM Sawant and then-CM O’Brien’s party line: every homeless person on Seattle’s streets was once stably housed within Seattle, until eeebil Amazon raised the rents and drove poor persons out into the streets. That fiction became ever-harder to maintain, especially after O’Brien lost his job for repeating it too many times to his exasperated constituents. So now, no one at the Stranger even bothers trying to ‘explain’ who Seattle’s homeless are, or what they want; the Stranger jet keeps blaming the city and its citizens for not providing whatever it is.

27

@25- they don’t go to bumfuck Missouri for the same reason they don’t go to bumfuck Mercer Island: they’d get chased out. This problem won’t get solved until every city in the country takes on its fair share of supporting people (or at least tolerating them). As it is now, any place that is halfway tolerant is punished by having to pick up everyone else’s slack.


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