The sweeps are not the problem per se. The problem is that is where they end.... we should do more... lets give them treatment also.

The problems rests with the monumental cluster fuck and misdirection of resources to handle what is essentially a massive drug addiction problem.

The solution has been to "get housing" first then who knows what happens... the trail just goes cold and nobody is held responsible for any results thereafter.... which just results in the addict having nicer digs to get high.

Whereas, we should first "treat the addict"... which means you have to take the political "hot potato" which is mandatory or is some cases "non voluntary" commitment to a drug treatment program for an extended period of time... and we are talking 4 to 6 months... not weeks.

Then you can transition to housing, jobs, training etc.

Seattle has the cart before the horse.... and you can see how effect that is... just look out your door.

The gunfire from the camp makes the parent's concerns fairly rational, even if it's unlikely to be directed at the school. Guns make most parents crazy with worry. The drug use and the squalor are less direct threats.

@1: there are not enough places to "treat the addict" the way you propose. and it's not just Seattle. it's every city impacted by the 2018 Martin v City of Boise ruling. Every city in every state in the 9th Circuit: AK, WA, OR, CA, ID, MT, NV, AZ

Lets stir this up even more by making this a "kids' verses "homeless" issue. A Classic Stranger Tactic to whip up hysteria. Are advertising sales of the The Stranger slow this week... Oh that's right you don't have a newspaper... you are now a blog.

You knew this is where the battle lines would be drawn... right from the beginning as the title baits the crowd.

The problem is drug addiction and treatment, not sweeps, not children and its really the city incessant refusal to acknowledge the problem.

"The issue was gun violence, fire, and drug use at the encampment (which exists because people can’t afford a home, just saying)."

This is not even remotely true. Being unhoused is no excuse for shooting guns, doing drugs and setting things on fire. That is called being an asshole neighbor and as many have pointed out you could give all these individuals homes tomorrow and they'll do the same thing there.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/man-arrested-for-arson-after-fire-set-in-renton-hotel-housing-homeless-people/

Now that hotel sits unused because it was damaged. This is just more of the same bs from TS. Whenever people are fed up with their unhoused neighbors level of crazy its their fault for not being tolerant or hating the poor. It has nothing to do with the fact that addicts who are not fully in control of their mental faculties are dangers to themselves and the community. If Paul Chapman wants to step up and host a few tents in his yard then maybe I'll give a shit about his opinion. Right now he is just another activist who really only cares about demonizing good people who are only asking for the ability to feel safe in their own homes.

I'll never understand why Seattle is so unwilling to provide basic sanitation services for encampments.* If we are going to indefinitely warehouse the city's most vulnerable in public spaces, you'd think it would go without saying that we also need to provide sanitary bathroom facilities, regular trash collection (specifically including sharps collection), and basic law enforcement at the bare minimum.

Instead we remain in this bizarre decades-long holding pattern where we treat encampments as transitory. That leads to the inevitable decline we see at this encampment: 3 shootings in the past 6 months (1 fatal), numerous fires requiring SFD response, overdose deaths (and several very close calls), and so on. That is essentially the life cycle of every encampment, so it's no wonder people living nearby eventually loose patience and demand a sweep.

*Even better: bite the bullet and build supportive housing using the only viable funding mechanism available, regressive taxes.

The claim that there aren't 10-15 non-congregate shelter spaces available sounds awefully dubious. Could it be that there aren't 15 non-congregate shelter spots that allow for drug use, chop-shops, and unwieldy "furbabies"?

@1 I actually kinda agree with you for once...
If you stipulate that this is a mental health problem, that people self medicate themselves because they can't get the mental or physical health support they need. Because we, in our infinite wisdom, do not think that is worth funding.*

Now, it's interesting you say "non-voluntary" when you want to cut support to the "voluntary" part. If this is too subtle for you, I can 'splain it for you. You asshole.

(coughronnie(cough)

@1 I actually kinda agree with you for once...
If you stipulate that this is a mental health problem, that people self medicate themselves because they can't get the mental or physical health support they need. Because we, in our infinite wisdom, do not think that is worth funding.*

Now, it's interesting you say "non-voluntary" when you want to cut support to the "voluntary" part. If this is too subtle for you, I can 'splain it for you. You asshole.

(coughronnie(cough)

Whoops, but such a douchebag comment needed to be addressed twice, I guess.

@8: Making the homeless more comfortable being homeless is going the wrong direction.

@8: “Instead we remain in this bizarre decades-long holding pattern where we treat encampments as transitory.”

Because the supposedly transitory nature of the encampments is the original lie, upon which tolerating illegal encampments was based. The companion lie said the campers were all honest, salt-of-the-earth, hard-working local heads of families, cruelly driven out into our streets by rents driven up by Amazon &c.:

“What do Amazon, Expedia, Starbucks, Alaska Airlines, Microsoft, and five other giant corporations have in common? They all sparked and perpetuated the housing and homelessness crises devastating the Puget Sound region!”

(https://www.thestranger.com/news/2019/02/05/38649372/a-bunch-of-corporations-just-came-out-in-support-of-eviction-reform-in-washington)

Meanwhile, anyone who has ever walked past a homeless encampment in Seattle knows the inhabitants are primarily single men who use drugs, and who were probably not ever stably housed in Seattle.

Everyone had an interest in telling these lies: CM Sawant for her “Blame Amazon Tax,” SHARE, LIHI, and the rest of the burgeoning homeless-industrial complex for the money. Ordinary citizens, knowing the campers were not locals and were using drugs (and stealing to get them) simply assumed the city was working to get drug treatment and permanent housing for the homeless, which it simply wasn’t. Everyone profited, except the citizens of Seattle (who now simply want the homeless to leave) and the homeless themselves, who are now dying in record numbers.

Yes, goddamn those parents for being concerned about " gun violence, fire, and drug use at the encampment." They should be grateful that their kids get to take a walk on the wild side at such a young age.

“The Parents Don’t Want Shelter. They Want Sweeps.”

That’s what a chronically-failed policy, one based on obvious lies, will get you.

“…kicking encampments around the city in a demented, unyielding game of Whack-A-Mole.”

I love the assumption that Seattle’s City Limits function like an Event Horizon around a black hole: once a homeless person enters Seattle, no force in the universe can make him leave. There’s never any follow-up on this; the assertion just keeps getting repeated over and over and over again, for years.

Parenting/public school education is death by 1000 cuts in Seattle.

Hannah dear, in the fine tradition of muckraking journalists and other historical movers and shakers, may I suggest that you go undercover in one of these camps, to find out what they are really like?

Truly impressive editorial stance by The Stranger. You can prioritize:

Homeless drug users who are repeatedly committing crimes and negatively impacting the neighborhoods around them in a myriad of ways; or
Kids going to and from school.

The Stranger — of course — advocates for city government prioritizing option 1 over 2 and argues that parents advocating city government prioritizing 2 over 1 are bad. It’s completely insane but par for the course for The Stranger. When you’re arguing that local government should choose homeless encampments over kids going to school, it’s probably time to reassess what you’re doing with your life.

@21 — she did, sort of:

www.thestranger.com/news/2022/08/22/78155342/what-will-they-do-with-his-garden

Of course what wasn’t published in her article was that the encampment she talked about was making life a living hell for the adjacent trailer park — the last in Seattle — filled with low income residents. Did Hannah write about the residents of the trailer park? Of course not. After all, that wouldn’t fit with the narrative that had to be maintained. But the Seattle Times did:

www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/trash-piled-up-at-seattle-mobile-home-park-as-rents-rose-homeless-camp-grew/

The takeaway is obvious: for The Stranger, nobody — not kids, not low income neighbors, not anyone — is more important than those in homeless encampments. Where there are trade offs, they should always be resolved in favor of the encampments. And any mention of the impacts the encampments have on those other people is absolutely verboten in The Stranger.

Hannah the Banana might be the tipping point at the Stranger. How long until a SECB endorsement becomes a red flag instead of a badge of honor?

@21 A KOMO reporter interviewed an encampment resident in connection with this 2/14/2023 broadcast: https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-homeless-crisis-ship-canal-bridge-encampment-interstate-5-i5-governor-jay-inslee-washington-state-wsdot-wsp-crime-public-safety-homelessness-housing-crisis-homeless-camps

The resident explained he is a fentanyl addict who supports his habit by shoplifting from nearby stores, and would not leave the encampment even if housing was offered. I assume if the Stranger elected to send a reporter, that's what they would hear as well.

The Stranger believes in gun control… except where the homeless are concerned.

310 homeless people died in King County last year.
160 died specifically from fentanyl overdoses.
In contrast - 10 people died from exposure.

Do people fall into addiction as a result of being homeless? or do they become homeless due to drug use? I am sure there is plenty of both.

Either way these facts don't exactly support the "Sweeps Kill!" narrative - which is why we didn't hear much about them from the Stranger. My suspicion is that regularly breaking up these kinds of encampments reduces access to drugs - and may save lives.

We already know what the other extreme looks like: The Ballard Commons and Woodland Park encampments. If no action was taken - we would still have them. Some residents got housing - others have been dispersed. Problem has not been solved - but we (housed and unhoused) is better of without them.

I think it's understandable parents see this encampment as a threat to their children. Painting the parents as greedy NIMBY types who don't "give a fuck" is pathetic.

sources:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/more-homeless-people-died-in-king-county-in-2022-than-ever-recorded-before/

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/washington/articles/2023-01-16/fentanyl-fuels-record-homeless-deaths-in-seattle-area

@22 don't say "par for the course" or you'll trigger anti golf course guy and Stranger homeless camp expert Paul Chapman lol

@21 -- assuming that The Stranger didn't send a reporter is a presumption of good faith granted to them that is pretty clearly no longer warranted. At this point the assumption should be that The Stranger had the same information as KOMO and buried it. The assumption should be that The Stranger -- like Fox News -- is acting in bad faith.

Sorry, meant @26.

Let's be clear the parents are advocating for the safety of young children. This camp, a block away, has had multiple shootings, numerous fires, daily meth and heroin use and the crimes in the immediate area are up significantly. ALL of the camp residents were offered housing. By your own research only two accepted housing. It's clearly not a housing or a sweep issue. This school is one of the most liberal, progressive and diverse schools in Seattle. It is a choice school. These parents chose a diverse and progressive environment for their kids. These are not conservatives you are attacking. It is very clear to me you are not a mother or you would not be advocating against the safety of children.

“This is a photo of wealthy people who DGAF about the survival needs of people in their community.”

While they’re not “wealthy,” they are the wealthiest persons in Seattle who’re likely to have a crime-ridden encampment nearby. That’s because encampments are not found in wealthy neighborhoods; they are found only in middle-class neighborhoods, working-class neighborhoods, and downtown.

Now, if the Stranger had Marxist writers who knew about class-consciousness and suchlike, maybe they could investigate this mystery. (Is it like the force which keeps homeless persons from ever leaving Seattle?) Seven-plus years into a declared Homelessness Crisis, why are only middle-class and working-class children at risk of taking bullets in the head from disputes in nearby encampments?

And now last night directly adjacent to a little pocket park where — you guessed it — there’s been encampments, and a stone’s throw away from the larger encampment referenced in this article, a giant fire suddenly erupts at 2 am and wrecks a long-standing Seattle business.

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/about-30-boats-damaged-in-early-morning-lake-union-fire/

The word “community” appears once in this headline post. It is used not to describe a group of parents at a local school who’ve banded together to protect their children from violence, but rather to describe an illegal encampment, where the ever-shifting population of homeless drug users constantly threatens those aforementioned schoolchildren with sudden, random acts of violence.

As noted above, a worldview which describes violent criminals as a community, and a school of children and their parents as a threatening, harassing not-community, really begs the question of what the Stranger is doing and why.

@36: That pocket park adjacent to Seattle Boat Company has been fenced off for two years. And unless you can throw a stone a half mile, you're wrong on that account too.

Funny how the only time the Stranger decides to care about straight white men is when they are hard core addicts that have little regard for those around them and have displaced/shut down several POC businesses - little siagon for one

Non-sweeping kills, as we have seen time and time again. Not sure why Stranger types get off on seeing people being shot and raped and exploited in these encampments. Maybe they feel better about their own pathetic existence in comparison?

200 people died on the streets in Seattle last year. Why?

We have an economy that does not work for most people because most of the wealth is stolen by the greedy in power who are at the top and that leaves the rest of us with stagnant wages, going to food banks to be able to eat etc. Rents are raised so that even people with good incomes struggle. They often work at more than one job and are too tired to write comments on the internet.

Many of my friends had to leave the city because it is cheaper elsewhere and have to drive many inconvenient miles to work. Lets blame the homeless who have no where else to go for our problems of not feeling safe. Its the corporate rich folks that are laughing all the way to the bank while you are targeting the powerless.

There is NO decent solutions for homeless people in this city. No massive Social Housing project enacted that could solve this crisis. There are rich corporate landlords and corporate media that pour on the hate towards the poor every damn day. Hate propaganda to keep folks looking down not up.

Its just plain cowardly to blame the poor, assholes, and not demand decent services and decent housing for all. People need this not just for the BEZOS crowd who have blood on their hands.

@44: Because, as related in this headline post, and in urls in some comments above, homeless encampments in Seattle are filthy, violent places, filled with dangerous drugs. They should all be swept, as their inhabitants would be safer pretty much anywhere else.

47 Should have known one of our local fascists would jump right in after my comments.

13 Making the super rich more comfortable is the real issue sweetheart.

One-way tickets to red states?
What could go wrong?

41: Hey, let’s not bring in Bob’s Country Bunker’s music in this debate, after all, they play both kinds of music.

45: I respect your viewpoint, however, it seems you apply the same logic that some on the right apply to gun control. “It’s [mass shootings] the price of freedom” or “new laws won’t work and only punish the law abiding”, basically throwing up their hands because “the system”. Sweeps aren’t the answer, certainly, but they’re one part of the solution. Just because you can’t do everything, doesn’t mean you don’t do something.

@50- any of the campers who came from red states ought to be bused back. That’s the only way said red states will have to start taking some fucking responsibility for their part of the problem.

@48: Your calling me a fascist is about the closest thing to proof positive that I’m not a fascist. I thank you for that.

So, you’re okay with multiple gunshots a block from a kindergarten, then? (A simple yes or no will suffice.)

@41, 51 -- chicken wire?

54 Just admit you hate poor people.

It is understandable that parents would be concerned about their children and that they are afraid of people gathered nearby their school that they of not know.

However, the constant harassment of homeless people is not the answer. Many of them are ill and 200 of them died on the streets last year and frankly that is a sickening result as a dysfunctional city that refuses to use proven care and decent housing for destitute persons.
We have seen people mentally ill and in a psychosis unattended wandering the city and being ignored. That is what we are looking at. That is one of the shames of how this city treats most of the disadvantaged including people of all ages.

We will continue to speak up and if you have ever been homeless you might understand.

This is not just Seattle. This is a national issue. If European cities can be humanitarian and solve this crisis then Seattle, one of the richest cities in the world, certainly can.

No one should have to live in a tent that is not what we are advocating for.

We are advocating for serious change to address poverty not the tiny piecemeal bs that the city of Seattle practices now which caters to the like of Bezos and his elitist ruling class group
that milk the people dry for their constant drive for profit.

@53 - I'm not so much talking about red states being unwilling to put up with their "bullshit" as I am about them using their usual tactic of making the libs in the blue states foot the bill for fucking everything. The modern incarnation of the Confederacy just takes, takes, and takes some more and then when we try to raise revenue to pay for their grifting, they block it in Congress. Maybe it's time we cut off their allowance.

@56: I led you right to it, and still you couldn’t admit it:

“It is understandable that parents would be concerned about their children and that they are afraid of people gathered nearby their school that they of not know.”

They know perfectly well about the drugs, overdoses, thefts and gun violence. They don’t want any of their children catching a bullet in the head from the encampment whilst walking to kindergarten. It really is that simple, but you’ve been smoking the Stranger’s meth’ for so long, you can’t even express concern for schoolchildren over criminals.

Please stop pretending you’re in any way qualified to lecture anyone else on this topic. As noted above, if you find yourself equivocating on the topic of protecting children from drug-fueled gun violence, you really need to check on what you’re doing and why.

@56: "that they of not know."

Well said. Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

@56: "If European cities can be humanitarian and solve this crisis"

Yes. With water cannons. If you are camped in an unaproved spot, they will move you out with a large hose. Been there, seen it in person.