News Jan 24, 2023 at 11:00 am

Is He a Democrat? A Socialist? "IT'S A NONPARTISAN RACE."

Ashiofu aims to lead with lived experience, and he's got plenty of it. Courtesy of Friends of Ashiofu

Comments

4

Wonderful. As if District 3 hasn’t already had enough of an incumbent who always puts ideology above fact: “I don't buy into the ideology that homelessness is caused by drugs and mental health issues. Homelessness is due to housing affordability, due to housing accessibility, and housing availability.”

“Ideology.” Seriously, has he actually ever walked past a homeless encampment in Seattle? Dirty needles and other drug works aren’t an “ideology,” they’re plain for all to see. In Seattle’s 2016 Homeless Needs Assessment, a majority of the homeless surveyed said they’d arrived in Seattle already homeless, a majority said they used alcohol or other drugs, and over two-thirds reported they hadn’t been able to afford rent in Seattle for about twenty years. That was not a local population, recently driven into the street by higher rents.

And, of course, the defund nonsense, without use of the word. How’s that work for Nikkita Oliver?

Nice to see the Stranger’s message discipline remains airtight. Specifically, the November 2021 elections simply never happened: “The 2023 city elections represent the first opportunity to change the balance of power on the council since the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020,” Yeah, electing Sara Nelson didn’t change a thing, as we can tell by the Stranger never running hit pieces on her. ;-)

5

I thought Dear Leader Sawant told us DSA were a bunch of corporate sell outs? Sorry Andrew.

As for "housing first" here's a great example of how that works out: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/king-county-taxpayers-paying-roughly-330k-month-empty-hotel-renton/ZKZ7IE4QANDW3M2XUFJB55YBYU/

We put a bunch of unhoused people in this hotel and surprise they had drug and addiction problems and promptly trashed the place and then burned it. So now it sits uninhabitable while the taxpayers pick up the monthly $330K lease payment. Yes give me more of that please.

8

“
when I asked if he was running as a Democrat, he reminded me that the council is technically nonpartisan.”

What a BS cop-out. Just because an elected office is listed as ‘non-partisan’ on the ballot, that doesn’t mean the candidates are.

Whenever a candidate says they are ‘non-partisan’ or demure on which party they best identify with, voters should remember how ‘non-partisan’ the Supreme Court is!

9

@7 beat me to calling out that galling quote.

The fentanyl crisis has to be addressed first. After all, the morgues are overflowing:

https://kfoxtv.com/news/videos/morgue-says-its-regularly-running-out-of-space-due-to-deadly-fentanyl-overdoses-seattle-king-county-dr-faisal-kahn-public-health-safety-test-strips-treatment-recovery-narcan

This is our lived experience Andrew.

11

Just popped in to see if the dicks that hang out in the comments here would be mad and am relieved to see that, yes, they are;-)

13

@12 There you go! Adding a little "kids these days" to being mad online, all while giving clicks to someone you don't like. Love it, great work! Ok, I gotta back to ignoring this place for a few years.

15

The main problem with the DSA is that it opposes military aid to Ukraine. That is not an antiwar position any more than America First isolationism was in 1940. (I say this as someone who has opposed every war the U.S. has directly fought since WW2.)

16

I'm going to pile on to the “I don't buy into the ideology that homelessness is caused by drugs and mental health issues" comment.

What a ridiculous statement. There are as many reasons for homelessness as there are homeless people. Anyone who is even a casual observe of the situation knows that some of them are mentally ill and/or addicted, some to a dangerous degree. There are also surely some who are homeless due to housing costs.

Blanket statements like his are stupid, and seem extremely disingenuous coming from someone who was homeless in the past.

It's up to the voters of District three, of course, but I wouldn't vote for him.

17

weird how they went to the library to apply for jobs instead of turning to meth or smack, ended up quite successful, and then blame homelessness on housing and not drugs.
like, clearly chronic homelessness isn't a housing issue and this person is living proof.

18

@17 - Bingo!

21

I'm sorry, but keeping addicts homeless does not help them stop using drugs. But often those who are homeless become addicts (or develop mental illness) after they lose housing because living that way is traumatic and desperate and people understandably want to disconnect and disassociate from their reality.

So to the extent homelessness and addiction and mental illness overlap, there's nothing about the likely chain of causality that supports denying housing to people. We need to house people, and then find ways to get them into treatment or services that will deal with their secondary problems.

I live out of the city now (I was priced out 25 years ago, and it's so much worse now) but I think Andrew Ashiofu has the right approach here. And he would know, because he's lived it firsthand.

22

I would like to know a bit more as to the degree of his being homeless; was weeks, months, years? And was he truly homeless, by that I mean actually living out on the streets, or in a tent somewhere for any length of time. I smell a little equivocation here.

23

Not an ounce of compassion from these bashers. Stunted emotional growth and they have to come on a progressive thread to show themselves to be truly ignorant. No shame.

21 Has a great comment which shows maturity. I was unhoused for some months years ago with a teenager. I was working. It is very unsafe. It is scary as hell and if you are female there are numerous predators which are housed not homeless but who love to take advantage of vulnerable people. One day is more than enough to be homeless. It was the most frightening event ever I went through. If I ever become homeless again I would go on drugs.

But not likely since I have my own home and have friends and support and never have to deal with that again.

People are the ones to make change politicians cannot be trusted. But since this candidate
has been homeless just maybe he is sincere.

Thank you for reading this and please speak up for the homeless.

24

17 and 18 Housing costs are the MAJOR reason poor and working people are homeless.

There are other reasons but cost is the main one. Little homelessness for many years until the 1980s when it started to creep up. Now we have massive financial institutions such as Black Rock that work to own all the housing and are big landlords. For many years credit histories and background checks were never used but now we have major financial institutions as landlords. Just maybe the little person doesn’t have a chance. A chance in hell.

25

3 What policies are you talking about?
The police budget has not been reduced and we do not have social housing. None of the BLM demands have been met about the jail, police brutality and prison industrial complex. Its still the school to prison pipeline.

Minimum wage increase and access for abortions has improved and Sawant was instrumental in that. You really have nada. Zero. Just babbling bs.

26

@25: Police staffing levels are at their lowest in thirty years. Per capita, Seattle has approximately half the number of officers it had in the early 1990s:

“Over the past two-and-a-half years, the city of Seattle said over 400 police officers have left the department through retirement or resignation. The number of trained and deployable officers in 2022 is 954, the lowest mark in over 30 years. Seattle's population was almost half of what it is today.”

But don’t claim “defund” didn’t have an effect:

“The trend really began in the summer of 2020 with no concrete solution on how to change course.”

(https://www.king5.com/amp/article/news/local/seattle/mayor-bruce-harrell-new-seattle-police-recruitment-plan-staffing-reaches-30-year-low/281-e98429ee-fc88-47f6-8890-b961393e2047)

Seattle’s citizens have less protection from crime than at any time in the past quarter-century. Behold the success of the “defund” movement!


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