In the wake of Wednesday’s town hall in Ballard, here are a few links and stories about the fight to reduce homelessness and the proposed employee head tax…
TINY HOUSES: The Whittier Heights Village (above), a tiny houses camp for homeless women at 8030 15th Ave. NW (above), is coming together. “We don’t have an exact (opening) date yet, but our projection is the end of May,” Low Income Housing Institute’s Aaron Long tells us. “There will be work parties at the site on weekends until it opens.”
O’BRIEN PETITION: A Change.org letter from “frustrated neighbors” to Councilmember Mike O’Brien has surpassed 2,000 signatures. “We have 4,000 (homeless) people outside, it’s growing every day because of the income-inequality,” O’Brien told Q13 when they asked him about the petition. “Can’t do this with less money — we need more resources.”
TIMES OPINION: The Seattle Times Editorial Board urges the city council and Mayor Durkan to reject the head tax proposal.
RESTRUCTURING: County Executive Constantine and Mayor Durkan say they’ll work together to create a more centralized and efficient homelessness response system.
TAX ALTERNATIVE: Leaders of three businesses, including Dick’s Drive-In, are promoting an alternative idea to the head tax: incentives for companies to donate money to non-profits.
CASE WORKERS: Some case workers say they’re a paycheck away from being homeless themselves, reports Crosscut. “I’m currently living with family members in Ballard,” says one in the story. “If I didn’t have that I’d be struggling hand to mouth like my coworkers.”
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Automatic Doors
Responding to Councilman O’Brien’s quote “We have 4,000 (homeless) people outside, it’s growing every day because of the income-inequality,”
This is false on multiple levels. First, I am sick of the euphemism “homeless” applied equally to law-abiding people who actually have a temporary problem and bums and criminals that are here because our city council has attracted them here. I live in southern Ballard, so I am surrounded by these people, and my experience is the bums and criminals outnumber the law-abiding down on their luck by a pretty significant margin. We should help the law-abiding people that will work hard to recover. But we should enforce the law against the growing gangs of bums and criminals. Another of our neighbors was raped by one of these, who was a Nicholsville resident just a few months ago.
Second, I’ve already stated why the bums and criminals are here, and it has nothing to do with cost of living. They’re here primarily because the city council has made this a great place to be a bum and criminal. The aforementioned accused rapist came all the way from Texas, the pickings are so good in our neighborhood.
The real problem here is city council, and our neighborhood will continue down the path they have flung us until we fix them. We have to vote much more intelligently.