The Ballard Library recently installed metal bars on the concrete blocks around the library and Neighborhood Service Center to stop people from loitering.
Kip Roberson, manager of the Ballard Library, said users were consistently complaining about safety and hygiene. “We’ve had camping issues on and off for quite some time. It got to a point where they were using drugs and leaving needles,” he says. “It’s an effort to make the space around the library inviting to everyone.”
Here’s an excerpt from the Seattle Public Library’s notice about the installation:
Patrons and neighbors have expressed concern about security and hygiene issues, citing unattended items left overnight in those areas, smoking, food and beverage waste, feces, urine, and discarded needles, which fall through the grates into the parking garage below. The grates provide natural light and act as ventilation for the garage, so it is important that they remain unobstructed.
The hygiene and safety issues have worsened in the past year, during which time central Ballard has seen a four-fold increase in homelessness, according to a Point in Time count reported in The Seattle Times.
The purpose of the metal work is to limit access to those areas to ensure an outdoor environment that is safe, clean and welcoming to patrons and to passersby.
The Seattle Public Library strives to maintain a welcoming and safe environment for all our patrons. One of our core values is that everyone is welcome at the Library, and our staff at Ballard work hard, and with compassion, to help level the playing field for underserved populations.
Thanks to Lana Ho for posting these photos in the My Ballard Group.
Well, there you have it. One more very expensive temporary fix to keep junkies and deadbeats from camping and loitering. I bet that doesn’t get factored into all that is spent dealing with these people. Now, do something about the tents and tattered futon mattress in The Commons! Get them out of there!
Like it wasn’t it your incessant whining that brought us to this. You morons are the ones doing this to yourselves .
@asking for a friend “…food and beverage waste, feces, urine, and discarded needles.” So, like who caused these structures to be modified at substantial cost?
I guess most of us know who the true morons are. Perhaps you are among them, if you are one of the pigs doing this.
We use our library every day. There are messes there sometimes, like anyplace. It’s a LIBRARY in a CITY. Compare it to any city you want. It’s not the urban hell you pretend. You guys pestered the city every day with your nonsense complaints and they went and put these things here to shut you up. They could have spent $10,000 to help somebody, instead of placating the nextdoor koo koo birds.
There weren’t messes at the library before the meth heads, stoners and H users showed. Tell your buddies to clean up their act or get out of Seattle. Pigs are not welcome here. Offers of help have been made repeatedly and rejected. Not feeling sorry for you one bit. Accept the help or leave.
Are you sure? Because I happen to know a place where one can look up records showing us whether or not the library had the same problems before. Just how far into the mists of time do you think you remember? Do you think I won’t find the same story a decade ago? Or two? Or three? What is really different nowadays is that crybabies can organize into mobs online and pretend they’re persecuted because they saw a sleeping bag.
Are you sure this is where you want to go?
You miss the point. Street campers need to stop crapping or urinating in public spaces around the library – there’s a port a potty across the street at The Commons, a shower and laundry not 100 yards away at the Rest Stop, and garbage cans at St. Lukes often where they get the food, and a sharps container nearby. Stop stealing stuff from the grocery and drug stores. Clean up your act, accept help if you need it, or LEAVE. Pretty damn simple.
Yeah, you showed them. They better watch out or you guys will flush another $10,000 down the toilet. And you’ll keep on wasting money on stupid gestures until they get the message. That’ll learn ’em!
Actually, that was money well spent. Now if you want to hang out with people shooting dope and urinating anywhere they feel like, invite them over to your place. Of course you’d do no such thing. You just want to post online about “how much you care” when in reality you don’t do a darn thing.
“asking for a friend” isn’t very good with this math thing. “central Ballard has seen a four-fold increase in homelessness,” I’ll explain that for you. That means the problem is 400% worse than it was previously. Now, please provide us with a link to an article that says this issue is the same as it was a decade ago..
Well, if Harley Lever and his “Safe Seattle” morons would stop showing up to every open house, shouting down every proposal to help the homeless crisis, we could at least start making a dent in the number of homeless.
Instead, we end up doing nothing and the problem perpetuates. Harley is doing everything he can to make Ballard and Seattle the desolate wasteland he so wishes it to be!
Yes, if only Safe Seattle, which was started two years ago, hadn’t gotten in the way, we wouldn’t be 13 years into the city’s “Ten Year Plan To End Homelessness.” If it weren’t for Harley Lever, our illustrious Seattle City Council would have clean that problem of years ago!
You are the one one bad at math. Homelessness has quadrupled, meaning it is 300% worse. If there were originally 100 homeless now there would be 400. The “worse” part is 300, which is 300% of the original amount.
The more you know!
Go back to 7th grade math. 400% increase is quadrupling.
I completely agree with you, these are very necessary measures!
Uff Da, morons and pigs?
These people?
Deadbeats?
Humans, sons, daughters, moms, dads, grandmas, orphans, refugees, children, missing loved ones, terminally ill, addicts, victims.
Compassion and action over hate and de-humanizing.
Boo Hoo, Carla
Yes, Skip. Remember to treat them with compassion next time you catch them breaking into your car or your home, stealing your bike, taking a dump outside the library or leaving needles for your kid to discover. According to Carla they are our most “vulnerable community members,” and they’re incapable of acting in any other way. So make sure you give them a hug, ask them what they need from you and “listen to your story.”
Typical blind prejudice of the fascist. You hate them so much you can’t think straight.
The ones most likely to steal your stuff are *housed* people. We know that from the facts we have already reviewed: there are four times as many homeless people in Ballard, but the crime rate has remained flat. If homeless people committed crimes more often than housed people, then an increase in homeless should have coincided with an increase in the crime rate.
Instead, the crime rate tracked consistently with the growth in housed population. No changes in the crime rate coincided with changes in the homeless population.
Yes Elenchos, if only all those prejudiced Trump loving right wingers working for the Ballard Library, not to mention all their right wing patrons with kids in tow, would just listen to you. Then they’d understand that crime around the library “has remained flat,” and it’s really all in Harley Lever’s head.
Like you know any of us who use the library or bring kids there. Have you even seen it in person? Ever? You’re trying to speak for people who have nothing to do with you. “Think of the children” works better if you actually know any.
Parents don’t neglect to report crimes they way you imagine, because it’s the only explanation you can think of for reality not matching your claims. All the crimes that happen have been reported, and yes, there are some, as always. But not any more than in the past. Crime rate hasn’t changed, underreported crime is a made up fig leaf.
Unhoused people are there, and that’s inconvenient. That’s the only part that’s true.
You sound like a real social justice warrior elenchos. I moved to Ballard back in 1999 and the property crime has increased along with the property taxes. Do us all a favor and please stop voting. The people in charge think like you do, obviously they have no solution and a huge disregard for other people’s money. So, when you get that ballot in the mail this October do the right thing and throw it away.
Do you even know what the crime rate was in 1999? I do.
What’s changed is the way your social media feed puts a spotlight on every local incident. It creates “mean world syndrome”, also known as “someone who reads Nextdoor.”
Do you really believe people are calling the cops every time a package gets stolen off their porch or someone smashes out their car window? I don’t get packages delivered to my home anymore and I have an alarm on my car now. However, it does get reported when a vagrant attempts to rape a woman at Golden Gardens or, less than a year later, another vagrant sexually assaults a women in a bathroom on Leary way. You can keep pretending our new neighbors aren’t doing any harm to our community, but for the love of Christ, please DON’T VOTE!
Unreported crime! Of course. How to disprove it? It’s unfalsifiable. To which I reply: that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Back in 1987 when the crime rate was THREE TIMES HIGHER, don’t you think citizens would have been even more frustrated with the ineffectiveness of the police? Wouldn’t they have been even more likely to not bother reporting minor crimes? What — specifically — do you know about them that proves that they had less unreported crime than we have now? You don’t know anything. You just think of yourself as special. You. Are. Not. Special.
Packages: you had some not arrive (sober when you typed the address? Just asking…) so you had them delivered somewhere safer. Packages arrived. PROBLEM SOLVED. And here you are whining about crime? You solved your crime problem.
…
…
RE: The sexual assault on Leary? It was REPORTED. It’s one of the crime statisitcs we have that show the crime rate now has been flat for 20 years. That statisuc shows there were THREE TIMES as many rapes, as well as property and other violent crimes, in the late 80s and early 90s. You whine now. but it was much much worse. Since 2000, it’s pretty much constant. Varies year by year, but the trend is flat.
What is not flat is local hype. Local blogs and social media inflame a certain type of person. There are two types of people: the ones who tried out Nextdoor.com when it first started, got to know it for a couple weeks, and ran like hell from the paranoid hyperventilating crime vultures and fear mongers. And the type of person for whom a lurid crime story is catnip. That’s what’s changed.
Social media has distorted your reality.
I’m the only one in Ballard that doesn’t report every crime I see? Right. Safeway, QFC, and Ballard Market have all hired security guards in the past couple years because they like raising their cost of doing business. Try going to Walgreens at 3:00am and see what those people have to deal with. Oh wait, they aren’t open that late anymore because they were tired of dealing with the homeless problem that you insist does not exist. I suggest you get out into your neighborhood and talk to some of the shop owners and their employees, but until then, PLEASE DON’T VOTE!
This “please don’t vote” stuff is just dumb. Why are you doing that? Give it up. You’re embarrassing yourself. What you need is to tell people a good reason why they should vote for the next Catherine Weatbrook or Scott Lindsey or whomever the right comes up with. Hopefully they’ll do better than the mayor primary — what was it, sixth or seventh place?
If it’s so hard for grocery stores to do business here, how come they just added a New Seasons Market? And PCC is adding a store. After Trader Joe’s already came. On top of Fred Meyer. And Safeway. And Ballard Market. And QFC. And they’re adding a Target.
Does that sound in any way like a neighborhood that is wracked by rampant crime? Because most everyone describes it as “hottest neighborhood in the city” and “booming” and “stampede of new businesses”.
You want to go shopping at 3:00 am, and you want it to be a sanitized, child-safe… no drunks? Is that what it was like at 3:00 am in Ballard in 1999? I happen to know it was not. I was here and I can tell you when the bars let out, it was a zoo.
Nobody is denying that there is a homelessness crisis. But the evidence shows that there is no increase in crime, certainly not one you can blame on homeless people. There is evidence that Seattleites in the *safest* neighborhoods are the very ones who are most unreasonably fearful about crime. Ballard being a prime example.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/mean-world-syndrome-in-some-seattle-neighborhoods-fear-of-crime-exceeds-reality/
I’m not asking you to vote for any republicans, I’m asking you not to vote at all. If you believe that Seattle is headed in the right direction than you are as delusional as the Seattle City Council. Spending $75 million per year on a homeless problem that gets worse by the month is Not progress and it seems that you, along with the city council, believe it is. I spent a couple of years running a grocery store. Adding a security guard means that you have to increase the cost of goods. We have the 2nd highest grocery prices in the US which might be okay for you and the rest of the real housewives of Ballard, but most of us would rather pay less, even if it makes our new homeless neighbors feel less welcome.
“I’m asking you not to vote at all.”
Keep on askin’, Gomer. Keep on askin’. Let me know how that works out for you.
The poorest 20% pay more in taxes than in any other city or state. We have 10% sales taxes, and property taxes that help drive up rents. Solution? A legal solution in Washington? A head tax for the wealthiest companies. The homeless haters killed it. Enjoy your high taxes. You did this to you.
Yes. How does that “make Seattle affordable for all”? Your head is way to far up Kshama Sawant’s ass to see that the head tax would Not have fixed the homeless problem and would Not have lowered anyone’s taxes. Keep that dream alive though, lady.
Did I say “make Seattle affordable for all”? Who are you quoiting? Not me.
All I said was flushing $10k down the toilet just for window dressing, security theater, is bad and we should never do it again. And I said we can’t fix homelessness, we can only make a terrible situation less bad.
Without an income tax option, the head tax was the only way to do anything without increasing the egregious burden of property and sales taxes. And the very people paying those taxes cut their own throats, all because they wanted to save Jeff Bezos money. What? F that guy.
The nimbys never shut up about how much they hate Amazon, yet they take to the streets to keep Amazon from leaving (spoiler: relax, they will never leave). Childish, simplistic, ill-informed. They believe life is fair.
Hay duke, you can hate, but do not misquote me. And, Skip, thank you for the empathy.
Carla, the term “moron” of course was first raised here by your kindred spirit blogger “asking for a friend,” in reference to resident tax paying citizens who are financing this whirling shit tour.
You, or the counterpart family members you reference ought to tell some of your street buds not to act like pigs – crapping, urinating, throwing their garbage and needles around in public spaces or where they live. Acting like a 4 year old does not command respect or deserve it from anyone. If you have the mental capacity to put food in your mouth, the rest can go in the garbage can. You can also go potty where you are supposed to. Pick you clothes and toys.
That has nothing to do with not having “compassion.” It is good parenting and good supervision for those who require it.
Uffda, May peace be with you.
This is a completely reasonable response. Good for SPL.
Seattle reaps what it sows. It’s truly a modern day Sodom And Gomorrah. Look at the leadership and the moral example they set. The last mayor and this new one on are a moral level somewhere between the swamp and the sewer. This anything goes attitude of “if it feels good do it”(shove a needle in your arm and dull all the pain of your miserable existence, we’ll clean up the needles) and “do your own thing”(s**t and piss in a bucket and live in a tent on the sidewalk). It brings all it’s problems on itself, just look in the mirror Seattle.
Get over yourself Harley. Seattle is one of the best cities in America, despite your persistent, sensationalist ballyhooing.
Put down the keyboard. Go outside and live your life. You’ll be much happier.
Sorry, I’m really not Harley.
You know if that’s true, it’s actually a lot worse. Harley can’t help being Harley.
But if you’re not him, and you choose to walk and talk and sound and think exactly like him? When you don’t have to? We’re talking about a man who wasn’t able to shake off the psychological damage of some moderately bad life experiences, and whose every act is colored by the baggage he carries from that. But you? What’s your excuse?
If you’re not a Harley sockpuppet, people assuming you are is kind of charitable on their part. You’re welcome.
Is it fun being poor and having no way out of poverty?
Elenchos, is that you? It sure sounds like you….But you don’t use sock puppets, right?
The answer to that question is obvious to everyone. If I were switching screen names to post the same things, everyone could tell. This is the thing you don’t get: you’re not fooling anybody. Changing screen names are about as effective a disguise as Clark Kent’s glasses. Everybody reading this can see right through it. They find it extremely annoying. You’re not convincing anyone that there are 20 of you. You’re only pissing them off.
Amazing fact: annoying everyone is one of the reasons you are so unpopular. Put two and two together.
Nah, I just annoy you and your fan club. Mostly out of duty to save our city from your ilk. But I have to admit, I also do it for entertainment.
You’re the inventor of irritating the grown ups to get attention! The other three year olds must be so impressed.
best cities? its a shithole lol!
AARP Livability Rankings:
https://livindexhub.aarp.org/?cmp=LVABLIDX_MAR25_015
Seattle is #3
US News Best Places to live:
https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/best-places-to-live
Seattle #10
Forbes Best Places for Business and Careers:
https://www.forbes.com/best-places-for-business/list/
Seattle #3
Great idea. It is a library for everyone, not daycare for derelicts. Same thing applies to parks. They are for day use by everyone, not camping for the homeless. They also damage the natural environment.
I went to the movies at Commons Park right next to the library. I posted pictures. It was fine. Dozens of people went, and we all saw. The next day a bunch of sockpuppeters posted lies about it, claiming it was filled with trash and all the usual nonsense. They weren’t even there.
Jesus sees you when you lie on the internet.
I went to the hot sauce festival there and it was 100% clean and fine. There was a dude sleeping in a rundown PT Cruiser filled with crap right in front of the library, but I’m willing to chalk that up to ‘random.’ There is no Jesus though.
My dog was attacked by a homeless persons dog that was off leash during the showing of ET in the park.
Obviously your dog hates homeless peoples’ dogs and is just fearmongering. And we all know your dog is really Harley Lever.
I live right next to The Commons Park. The reason the homeless aren’t everywhere during movies or events at the park are that the police come and shoo them away, or at least off to the side, before these events. Currently there are 5 tents on the sidewalks surrounding the commons park and a couple footons. During the day there are usually at least a dozen homeless hanging around the park. Often disassembling bikes and doing drugs. There are at least a dozen car campers in the blocks surrounding the park. I’ve lived here for the last three years and seen not only a dramatic increase in the number of homeless, but also violent incidents and run-ins with mentally ill people acting aggressive or at least belligerent.
Elenchos, you better read the above post. It is a true and verifiable statement, and it certainly refutes the BS you constantly spew forth. You can look to tell this poster is telling the truth. Where do you suppose those bikes come from that are getting chopped up – gifts of $2500 bikes to the homeless?
Yep, I’ve seen the “bike chop shops” many times. Those are garbage bikes, collected from a dumpster, or mostly likely donated by Bikeworks. They put to gather bikes as a training program for kids, and donate them. The only point of “chopping” up a bike is if it has valuable components you can sell. Your 20 year old Schwinns and Huffys from Walmart have no components worth selling.
The reason you guys can’t understand any of this is that your fat asses haven’t sat on an actual bike for 30 years.
Consider: you’re the same ones who think the “spandex lobby” is all powerful. If bike theft was actually a significant problem, or if bike theft had increased at the same time that homelessness had increased, then how come the all powerful spandex lobby hasn’t demanded the city do anything about it?
Nothing you say adds up. When was the last time you actually set eyes on Commons Park? Ever?
Oh, that’s right – donated bikes. Don’t think I’ve seen Shimano 105 components on a Walmart bike. This stuff came of a newer Cannondale. I’ve also seen some older DX deore stuff off a late 1990’s mountain bike – probably a Trek. Some dude was breaking down a really nice Gary Fischer bike a couple weeks back. Each used component from brakes/sprocket/wheels/dereailuer and pedals will go for at least $25-40, sometimes more for the really good stuff on-line. Your street camper sells to the middle man for $10, or whatever it takes to get a hit. It all happens at The Commons, the north planting strip at St. Luke’s or by the Library. Keep your eyes open, Elenchos. Your BS gets deeper by the minute.
Your buddy with the shopping cart is still hanging out on the north planting strip along with 3-4 other tenters. You know, he’s got the LP vinyl records hanging from HIS (or is it a QFC) shopping cart? A couple guys sleeping on the grass or the planting strip. Looks like they need a hit. Guy with the stuff covered by NE corner (no tent – but a kind of bookcase a couple days back). Ratty old futon mattress next to the garbage cans at the NE corner. Q Tip sitting on the bench by the NE corner. A couple guys with a crack pipe just north of the waterpark fountain.
And yet the police laugh you out the door when you tell them this. And yet the only photos of these bikes you guys ever managed to post are pictures of rusty junk. Everyone is in on the vast homeless industrial complex conspiracy! Everyone!
Jesus knows when you lie on the internet. But then, we all know, so…
Elenchos, do you suppose Jesus knows when you miss the honey bucket by a hundred feet on purpose, steal people’s stuff and then wander over to HIS father’s house (St. Luke’s) for breakfast, steal stuff from Bartell’s, then do car prowls the following night? Do you suppose HE knows when you steal from your parents or others in your family and cause them great emotional or financial pain as a result of your bad acts and addictions? See, I’ve been waiting for HIM or HIS father to weigh in on some of this addiction stuff and help us out of the mess.
Do I need to post the pictures I took today of the honey buckets in Ballard Commons Park, right next to the library? It was fine.
There was some refuse near the trash cans. There were tents. People were sitting around the park. Some looked like they lived in the tents. Some look like they lived in houses. Children were laughing in the spray park. Kids played in the skate bowl.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Don’t you know, Uf Daa? Those shopping carts were “donated” to Elenchos’s merry band of misfits by QFC. Or “collected from a dumpster.”
OK, you got me there. Can’t deny the ugly reality of shopping cart theft. It’s true. Some guys walked off with shopping carts they had no right to. You must be in unimaginable pain from this unspeakable crime. There there.
Wow, I’m amazed! You don’t have some ready excuse, rationalization, or deflection for this? Not to worry, I’m sure those shopping carts are the ONLY things your friends steal.
By the way, speaking of shopping carts, perhaps you’re familiar with the nice old guy who likes to go around collecting stolen shopping from around Ballard Commons and he returns them to the QFC. You support him returning stolen property to its rightful owners, yes?
No, no excuse. None! It’s wrong! Stealing is BAD!
Stealing shopping carts IS against the law. No denying it. It’s naughty. It’s double naughty. The naughty bad man should return the shopping cart. It’s the RIGHT thing to do, and if he doesn’t, well, he’s a cad. There, I said it. He’s a C-A-D! CAD! First rate one. First rate cad, that is. No gentleman at all. At. All.
Between the shopping carts and the guy who is a SERIAL parking violator, it makes me wonder if the endtimes have come. Has God himself abandoned us to this HELL? Why even go on?
No, honestly, I’ll tell you: it’s chickenshit. Parking violations. Shopping carts. Like THAT has never happened in the history of piggly wigglies. You have something really wrong with you if you freak out about this kind of chickenshit. Chick-EN-SHIIIIIT. Stop annoying grownups with your chickenshit.
So as I posted above I have lived right next to the Commons Park for the last three years. The number of homeless people living in tents and car campers has increased steadily in that time. I walk my dog through that area at least twice daily. I’m a middle aged white guy for reference. I’ve only felt apprehensive enough to avoid an individual in the area outright maybe three times. Usually this was someone having an episode, screaming, swinging a bat or stick or other something similar. I can totally understand how some people would be apprehensive about being in that area. Everyone’s tolerance is different. I’ve witnessed fist fights. I’ve seen the police called numerous times. I’ve seen people defecating on the side of the street. I’ve seen plenty of drug dealing. Just this morning I witnessed a client of urban restop screaming at an employee at the top of his lungs from the sidewalk daring her to call the cops. I’ve definately seen homeless taking stolen bikes apart. I bike commute regularly so believe me when I say I was suprised to see a couple thousand dollar Specialized Roubaix being stripped down. Some of these people have become familiar faces over the last 3 years. If you live in the area I’m sure you are familiar with the car campers that have been there for YEARS. People used to living in downtown SF or NYC probably wouldn’t bat an eye at most of this. But I definitely don’t think the residents of Ballard should except or tolerate that level of homelessness.
You do realize Ballard has been a Norwegian fishing town for like 100 years right? it was boats and bars and drunk fishermen. Fist fights used to happen a LOT more often.
When you say “tolerate that level of homelessness” you speak of it as if you’re the victim. Nobody in Seattle wants to tolerate this level of homelessness. Because we don’t want the unhoused people to suffer! Not you! You might have unsightly views in your park sometimes, but that is not what we are having to “tolerate”. Nobody gives that many fucks about your inconvenience.
You need to get it out of your head that anybody promised you views of nothing but flowers and dancing sunbeams your whole life. When you pay to live in a gated community, you literally get a contract specifying that you will get to see a nice, clean, tidy, and happy view. It’s part of the deal. That is not the deal here. It’s a city. There is crap here.
We tolerate the crap, in the sense that we tolerate the inconvenience of having to see people who are not doing well. We work to alleviate the suffering of THEM, not the unsightly things you wish you didn’t have to see.
Wow guess you’ve totally got me pegged from my one post above. lol. For my part, I guess based on the couple dozen replies in this thread, most of them blatantly combative if not outright insulting, I’ve got a pretty good picture of who you are as well.
If you care to know, I’ve lived in big cities in the US and Europe my entire life. I’ve not crawled out of my gated community and been shocked by the horrible site of the poor…. lol. What insulting crap.
As I said, I’ve lived next to the park for a few years. I routinely use the park, I don’t think its dangerous. I also understand how some people are afraid or at least apprehensive about being around there. I’ve on occasion had conversations with many of the more permanent homeless living around the park. Usually they like to say hi to my dog. I fully understand that they are all people, each with a story to tell and they deserve compassion.
That doesn’t mean people living in the neighborhood should have to put up with people living on the street in front of their house for YEARS as is the case with many of the car campers in the area.
That doesn’t mean people should have to put up with people breaking down stolen bikes in a public park.
That doesn’t mean people should have to put up with heroin use outside their front door. My dog comes across used needles at least once a week in this park.
That doesn’t mean I should have to deal with people defecating in the bushes or wandering around high as fuck screaming at the top of their lungs.
The city should have compassion and should do everything it can within reason to get people off the streets and get the healthcare they need. compassion can’t be limitless. The city’s budget certainly isn’t without limits.
For the record the Commons Park is very small (just 300ft x 250ft). As of this evening there were 5 tents, and about a dozen homeless people in the park. Additionally there area a couple more futons and a few other piles of belongings strewn about. There were at least two stolen bikes (stolen obviously because they were bike share bikes with the lockout devices removed). There were 6 car campers just in the streets surrounding the park.
So you want them bulldozed? Put in concentration camps? Just beaten with clubs until they go “away” (wherever that is)? What are you asking for?
Because the city decided to get the money to build housing to address this problem. We have the most regressive taxes in the country. No large city makes its poorest residents pay more of their income in taxes. Not to mention the middle class who can’t exactly afford another property tax increase.
So guess what? They passed a tax aimed at Amazon and the richest corporations. The corporations put up half a million dollars to kill it, and the anti-homeless nimbys here jumped at the chance to help Jeff Bezos keep a few hundredths of a percent of is net worth safe.
So. There you go. Tried to fix it, but the drooling anti-homeless loons obstructed it. Now what? You want a property tax increase? Gas chambers? What?
Amazing response… ‘bulldozed and put in concentration camps’ lol. You deflect reasonable arguments with vitriol. You’re trying oh so hard to shove those words in my mouth. Its amazing. Later down the thread you accused someone of ‘pissy attacks and attacking you’. Have you even read your own comments?
I’m perfectly happy to spend whatever money is needed to get people help. Drug treatment, mental health services, temporary housing, job assistance you name it. I’m fine paying more in taxes if that’s what it takes.
If these people refuse these services them I’m also perfectly fine spending my tax dollars to prosecute them under whatever laws are available, or under new laws if the city can muster the will to pass them. Even if that is more expense.
There are at least a dozen car campers in the area, probably 6 of which have been there for over 2 years. These people should be offered assistance and if they don’t take it their vehicles should be removed.
There are people chopping up bikes in the park. There are people there right now with stolen bike-share bikes. They should be arrested. I’m sure they will be back in a few days but at least they probably wont be breaking down stolen bikes in the middle of the park. But its more expensive to arrest them! Ya i’m fine with that.
If you can manage to find them the people dealing heroin in the area should obviously be arrested.
I don’t know what to do with the tent campers. The city removes them from the library and they move to the north of St. Lukes. They get shooed out from there and they move to the park. Rinse, repeat etc. etc. These people should be offered whatever assistance is available and if they repeatedly refuse it….. they should be removed and if needed arrested.
Your argument can’t be that its expensive to enforce the laws so we should just let people break them whenever they want for however long they want.
In your imagination. If you have any evidence of any crimes, you should report it. The problem with you nextdoor haters is you waste the police’s time reporting nonsense with no meat to it. You THINK a bike looks stolen. You THINK a guy looks like a drug dealer.
Same old Harley: your brother (if he exists!) supposedly refused help (he probably refused to have anything to do with that knob Harley) and that is your universal explanation for everything. You think they all refuse help. You have zero information, but you don’t need it, because you project your prejudices.
I’ve been an avid biker for years. I bike commute most days. I’m reasonably certain that the homeless people in the park didn’t own the 2K dollar Specialed Roubaix that they were stripping down a couple weeks back. I’m also pretty damn certain that the bike share bikes that are currently in the park right now, next to the tents, with the lockout devices removed… are in fact stolen. Unless you think they just found em like that and are borrowing them. You THINK all the homeless over there are unfortunate helpless angels.
Super plausible! What did the police say when you told them?
You’re a cold piece of work elenchos. You should probably go fuck yourself.
Hey, Harely is known to play fast and loose with the truth. Nobody knows if his brother even exists, or if any of that stuff went down the way Harley says. We only have the words of a known griftter. It’s worth fact checking the guy, and I’m sure there’s another side to it. Why only believe Harley’s version?
Is it fair game? Sure: he never shuts up about it. He uses it. Exploits it.
He uses biography to paper over weaknesses in his rhetoric. You’re supposed to accept whatever he’s selling because of this thing from 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. He makes a lot of sockpuppets that use the same ploy to make you trust them. The classic liberal credentials that he thinks fools everyone.
Always the same tired bag of tricks. People catch on. Not fooling anybody, Harley. Not fooling anybody.
I mean, look: you made ANOTHER sock puppet, “That brother of Harley’s? Off limits to your BS” Why? Who do you think you’re fooling with the fake screen names? Who is that dumb?
You just lost, elenchos. Sadly you don’t know it. But you just did.
Great news! Then I guess you’ll never have to reply to anything i say ever again. Been nice knowing you. Bye!
Enjoy making up fake screen names to hide yourself from the painful truth!
Elenchos, we know who the grownups are. Not you, that is for sure. No need to go bi-polar on us, with your chicken poop rant. Help and/or medication is there if you ask for it.
Actually if some street camper doesn’t return the shopping cart he/she is a thief. They are also a thief they steal stuff from Bartells or QFC, or even Sweet Mickey’s, or steal bicycles or steal parts from bicycles parked in public spaces. You don’t seem to understand that, just like many other things that are before your very eyes, nose and ears around the library, The Commons and St. Luke’s.
You haven’t given any reasons why substance abusers -and don’t tell us there aren’t many substance abusers and criminals hiding among the homeless- should get perpetual free passes for theft, public defecation, street camping, illegal parking. Some of these freeloaders take advantage of services for YEARS, free emergency medical and some health services. Societies have rules for a reason. People should live by the rules or accept consequences.
Yeah, we do live by the rules. Who tells us, in a civilized society, what the rules are? What we can and can’t do? Courts. Judges.
The courts have tossed out anti-vagrancy, anti-homeless, presumed-guilt anti-drug-user laws for years and years, across the country. You can’t arrest people without direct evidence of a crime. What you consider “evidence” is not evidence. You love civilization so much, well, respect the courts.
A constitutional amendment is not going to happen. Free money from Olympia or Washington D.C. or the King County Council is not going to happen. There is no free money. We can arrest people for actual crimes, but if you want to convict them and jail them, well, you pay for that. Jail someone for camping? You’re going to spend thousands of dollars to jail them for a few days, maybe weeks, maybe months (for TENS of thousands of dollars), and then? They are right back on the street. All that money wasted.
Most of this is just Harley projecting. He claims he has a brother who refused help, and he uses that template to pretend he understands all drug users, all homeless. No proof Harley even has a brother, but regardless, he has no expertise, just prejudice, and childish, simplistic solutions that don’t work.
None of the crimes I mentioned touch on any constitutional prohibitions, elenchos. Street camping is illegal, if the camper is trespassing AND shelter is offered. You an oxy user, or did you graduate up?
Street camping is a civil infraction, not a “crime”. It’s barely a misdemeanor. You want to clog the courts and jails with chickenshit offenses and pay with OUR TAXES to jail thousands of people for a few days at astronomical cost. In the hopes that they’ll leave. But where can they really go? You don’t get the reality that they have nowhere. This is it for them. Also, this is their home. They won’t leave their home. They are Seattle people, much as you pretend they’re from some far away place.
Just like you are desperate to find my real name so you can harass me into silence, or harass ECB into silence. Your whole simplistic mindset is dreaming up ways to drive away everybody who bothers you. Grownups have to LIVE with others, even if they dislike them.
If you want to live separate from anyone who kind of annoys you, you should have earned enough to buy a place in a gated community. But here’s the thing about life: it is not fair.
“You an oxy user, or did you graduate up?”
What do you think you prove with this kind of pissy little attack? It’s silly posturing that means nothing. It only helps prove that you believe there is something to gain by harassing people. Maybe you can make them shut up, or leave. How’s that working for you so far?
You fail to mention the families with small children enjoying the spray fountain. People on the clean grass reading in peace. It was fine.
I was there only minutes ago. I took pictures.
There were tents. Unhoused people were present, existing. Blatantly existing. Drugs? No? Bikes? Junk salvaged or donated. Violence? None.
You guys literally believe spoiling your view with the sight of people struggling to live is an offense— to you! You feel victimized because you SAW poors.
No, we feel victimized because people are claiming public space for their private use. And we feel this is unacceptable in a civilized society. We can’t give them houses, but we should put them through rehab and into a half-way house situation until they are capable of independent living.
Park continues to be wide open. Sidewalks continue to totally unblocked. Library is wide open, plaza wide open. Public space continues to be fully available for all. The problems you speak of do not exist.
Courts continue to prohibit “putting” people through rehab just because we want to. Rehab continues to have zero funding. Childish, simplistic solutions that fail to understand the problem.
I walked through the commons just yesterday. Several tents on the north side. We spend tens of millions every year on “carot” solutions that don’t work. Time to spend that money on some “stick” solutions that will work. The definition of insanity if hoping for a different outcome from the same tactics. We need new tactics and if we need to change various laws then that’s why we have a democracy.
Yes. There are SEVERAL tents. Why do you guys keep repeating that? Nobody disputes that there is a large number of people camping. I posted photos of the SEVERAL TENTS.
We get it. There ARE several tents. Fact.
It only underscores that your entire deal is that you feel victimized because these people merely exist and you can see them. The park is clean. It is wide open. Nothing in the park is inaccessible. The sidewalk is clean, and in no way obstructed.
“Stick” solutions. Punishment. Why? Because you think life is fair. You blame unhoused people for being unhoused. Under no circumstances can you believe they could be in that state without it being their fault. Therefore, a little motivation, some punishment, and they will choose to take advantage of the many wonderful opportunities life just spreads before each and every one of us. Like a Disney cartoon.
If you’ve lived your whole life in a bubble of privilege, I could see how you could start to believe that’s just how it is for everyone. It was easy for you so it must be easy for everyone else, right? Because life is fair, right?
(I can’t believe I’m saying this) but elenchos is right. Some of these people are there through no fault of their own – SOME. Not ‘all.’ There are probably just as many who are drug addicts or alcoholics – and sorry, I don’t buy that whole ‘oh it’s a disease they need help!’ garbage. You forgot to mention them, elenchos. They chose to ‘drop out’ and enroll in the University of Inebriation. They’re on the bottom because of their choices.
Now, if we could separate the ones who are blamelessly unhoused vs. those who screwed up big time, I think we could maybe start to fix this, since I would guess if you are homeless through no fault of your own and aren’t an addict, you would want to get into housing.
Life isn’t fair…something something…sock…something something…sidewalk not impeded.
I know, right? Maybe from now on when you guys bleat “taking our parks! Blocking our sidewalks!” I just go take another picture of our unblocked sidewalks and perfectly open and available parks.
Or you could all just stop saying it, since it’s not true. There’s several tents, they’re off to the side, and they’re not bothering anybody except those who can’t stand the sight of them.
“I don’t buy that whole ‘oh it’s a disease they need help!'”
Yeah! Who died and made scientists the experts on what is or isn’t a disease? They’re going to have to to a lot better than a bunch of research and peer reviewed study to change my mind. What about my prejudices? What about that one time I knew that one guy? What about HARLEY’S BROTHER???
The medical establishment has a lot more work to do before I give up my firmly held opinions based on an anecdote.
So, instead of agreeing that ‘maybe’ some of these people are unhoused due to their own poor choices, you pick a fraction of my statement and run with it to throw shade. Classy. Today’s SJW’s, shout ’em down until they stop disagreeing with you!
Maybe if you’re the type who thinks it’s a sick burn to accuse someone of being in favor of justice, you can expect a lot of rejection. Just throwing that out there.
We could sort out people in crisis, figure out who is truly deserving and who is a bad person. Figure out who made bad choices because of mistakes, like we all make. Who made bad choices because they’re just not too bright, like some of us are. Or who made bad choices because they’re just bad. Like some of us are.
But how come we don’t go figure out which of the housed people are bad? Why does everyone else get to use the park or walk down the street or be given due process, without having to first prove they deserve it? Everybody else gets to keep what they have and take advantage of whatever services and opportunities exist, without first proving they only make good choices and aren’t a scallywag or rapscallion.
It would be a mess if we all had to measure up to some standard before getting anything. But we’d probably learn a thing or two: everybody has made bad choices. Everybody has defects. It’s only homeless people who must be doubly punished for it, apparently.
“But how come we don’t go figure out which of the housed people are bad?…Everybody has defects. It’s only homeless people who must be doubly punished for it, apparently.”
We do arrest them. Or at least fine them. We don’t do that to “homeless” because you guys scream that any punishment of them for the same behavior that the rest of us would get punished for is “criminalizing homelessness.” because they cannot work will not pay. So there’s no punishment for vagrants, and no justice for their victims.
When you see housed people start getting away with parking on the street for as long as they like without getting ticketed like those living in derelict RV’s, then we can alk about being “doubly punished.” There’s two sets of laws. Actually, only one set, and it only applies to housed people. Vagrants get a free pass.
Thanks for trying to explain it Hayduke, but elenchos already made up her mind. Taxpayers = bad, homeless = virtuous to a fault, without sin, and untouchable.
Trying to assign the same logic to those living with a fixed address is lunacy, but she’s giving it her best shot!
She thinks people are just fear mongering and making stuff up. It’s all just “mean world syndrome” and right wing loons on Nextdoor. Like the story I just read about how a 5 year old boy was assaulted by one of our “unhoused neighbors” at a Wallingford park (Lower Woodland, I think).
Lies, all lies according to her. Coming from people who were trying to stop people from “existing.”
Everyone reading this can look out their window and see their neibhgor’s cars planted in same spot for more than three days. Everyone reading this knows of cars and vans and RVs that have sat in front of their neighbor’s house for months, and for years.
The bullshit you’re trying to pass off here is that it’s only this certain class of poor people that you dislike who are abusing public parking. Everyone knows that’s bullshit.
Do you have like seven cars or something? Parking is this huge obsession for you.
Here, this will help: write this down, print it out, frame it: “Parking in a city is a pain in the ass. Always. Always has been. Always will be. If you can’t deal with parking problems, do not live in a city.”
Too bad Jesus, and Muhammad, and Buddha, and Zeus, and Odin, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are all mythical.
It’s not the Bronze Age, it is Seattle in the 21st Century.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” These vagrants are mostly able-bodied men between 20 and 45 years-old. They are not giving according to their ability. In fact they are depriving those who are truly in need. These vagrants soak up resources best used by those who have no choice.
No Sympathy. No Regrets. To the Reeducation Camps with these bums, until they learn how to contribute to society.
I agree with Acting Wizard. There is no Jesus. And if you’re able to work but choose not to, we shouldn’t bend over and give those who choose ‘not to’ any free stuff. Yes, they’re homeless. But is it because they’re unlucky, or…lazy, addicted, angry? At what point do we help, and at what point do we say no help? Can I get a handout? Can elenchos? If we can’t, why not? Cause we bother to work for a living?
Some of us have just…lost compassion. I’ve had run-ins with clearly unstable individuals, and, my bad, I just want to punch them. Yes, I admit, I’m not compassionate enough to look ‘beyond’ the illness to the person beneath. Get in my face, my first reaction is punch. I just don’t have any patience for that crap. And that’s on me.
But I think that’s where a lot of people have gone to…they’ve lost compassion and patience. Maybe elenchos is better than us because she seems to care. And that’s admirable, and it’s her point of view, and she’s allowed to have it.
But I’m allowed to have mine, and I say ‘meh. Don’t care about the homeless, don’t want to help them, just want them gone.’ And if that makes me a worse person…so be it. I’ve made my peace with that.
“Get in my face, my first reaction is punch”
https://img.memecdn.com/internet-tough-guy_o_1120814.jpg
So very man.
Another trans phobic post
Your violent reaction suggests, like the bums, you also have problems dealing with civilized society.
elenchos is a fool but he’s absolutely right that your response is the cowardly response of an internet tough guy.
When I’m panhandled I give them a serious look and a firm one word response. No. And I just keep on moving. Of course I walk at a New York pace so it’s the rare bum who can catch up long enough to ask.
I’m not talking panhandled, I’m talking the mumbling, yelling, up in your face kind of homeless guy. I don’t care if they’re panhandling, but when they’re yelling at me and in my face because the green dragon they ran into yesterday offended them, that’s when I lose my patience. And sorry, but my first reaction is a good quick punch to the illogical. Yes, I know that anyone mumbling about some stupid nonsense is probably having a mental episode. And as I explained, I just don’t care.
Someone mumbles at you and you react with violent impulses. And THEY’RE the ones who need to be rounded up?
So a few whiners make a place more uncomfortable for everyone. Nice
If by whiners you mean the career vagrants who trash the library and the Commons and complain that they should be allowed to camp wherever they want, yes.
I would have preferred punji sticks.
Feces? Less than 100 feet from the Honey Bucket?
How can you house people who aren’t even house and potty trained?
for f sake, just remove the vagrants. it is not legal to camp in city parks or sidewalks…enough with the weepy coddling.
sweep them out.
Can SPD just drop a tactical nuke onto the park?
And then what? Ask them politely to stay away? Post armed guards on the border of Seattle and threaten anyone who looks funny? Build a wall and make Bellevue pay?
Sorry Harley, but your genius plan has the long term thinking of about 5 minutes.
Or we could, you know, house the homeless? That would solve the problem. But nah, let’s spend a never ending amount of money constantly dislodging the homeless. Maybe they’ll finally decide to stop being poor and homeless!
How many $billions do you think it would take to house all the homeless here? And once they’re all housed, assuming of course that they actually accept the housing instead of repeatedly refuse it, how many $billions more will we need to spend to fix the homes they trashed? And how much more when their friends to decide to come to “freeattle” for an extended visit?
What do you think would happen if you set up a tent in Union Square Park in NYC or the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris?
Think you would be welcomed with open arms?
Your tent would be removed, with extreme prejudice, before you had a chance to roll out your sleeping bag.
And no one would really give a hoot where you went. Or what happened to you.
Doesnt sound to welcoming to the drunks and junkies but city council just throws money at everything. Seattle sucks now. Maybe the richie richs should let the homeless take showers at thier condo they paid way too much for.
There are only 12,000 homeless people in King County.
Surely there are 12,000 compassionate souls who would take them in. Maybe the Jerks at St. Lukes can let the denizens of Ballard Commons Park live with them. I mean they give them free food, maybe they should be required to deal with their free crap too.
There are 2,177,000 people living in King County.
Only 12,0000 of them are homeless. That’s less than one-half of one-percent.
Screw the less than 1%. Arrest them, roust their camps, do it today, do it tomorrow, do it until they move to Phoenix, or back to the Appalachian hell-hole they moved here from.
How’s Mike O’Brien going to turn this “hostile architecture” into another virtue-signal fest?
If O’Brien was doing his job these things would not have been built.
O’Brian’s job is fluffing up the pillows for people who miss hitting the Honey Bucket by 100 feet. I know two year boys with better aim.
I think Elenchos is Mike O’Brien.
The only solution to this problem is to take homeless and addicts into custody and put them through a rehab program. No choice. No alternatives. They clearly need help and help should be mandatory.
It’s unconstitutional to take anyone into custody for being unhoused or addicted to drugs. You could try involuntary commitment, but that requires going to court and proving your case, which is not cheap. For all the money you spend trying to get one person committed into in-patent care (which, btw, there is no funding for and they’re not insured so…) you could just build them homes.
These simplistic ideas have been thought of before. That’s why this wasn’t all “solved” years ago, as all the simpletons think it should have been.
Not unconstitutional to take someone into custody for possessing illegal drugs.
or trespassing
Oh, yes. Just stop and frisk them. That works so well.
None of you guys has figured out how you’re going to pay for all this. No head tax. No income tax. It’s all coming our of your property taxes and sales taxes. You know that isn’t happening. In the end it amounts to obstructionism: propose impossible, never-happening, non-solutions, and complain complain complain.
The grownups are working on this, you know.
Seattle spends a minimum of $77,000,000 a year on the homeless.
There are approximately 12,000 homeless in all of King County.
We spend at least $6,416 per year on each homeless individual.
The homeless account for about one-half of one percent of the population of King County.
We are already spending millions on a tiny population and getting zero results.
So Yes I’m okay with spending the $77,000,000 a year on incarceration instead of pandering.
Enablement and compassion seems to be working fantastic over the last decade. Let’s continue down that path and see where we’re at in 2028.
Yes we see how the grownups are handling it.
Don’t have to frisk when shooting up in plain sight.
Then we need to change the constitution. And I think you can take someone into custody who is harmful to themselves. Homelessness and addiction are clearly harmful. Let’s set that as the bar and streamline the process.
You can, if you can *prove* they are a danger to themselves. You have to know them. You have to have them examined them by a qualified professional. They get a competent legal defense, and they can have professionals dispute the claim that they are a danger to themselves. You know why, right? Because otherwise every time your neighbor thinks you’re annoying, they can have you committed to the loony bin on their say so.
You’re talking about hours of expensive psychological work, and hours of expensive court time. And then they — maybe — get put into a very expensive facility which our society currently does not fund.
But we don’t pay for anywhere near enough *voluntary* mental health services that our people need. Why spend tons of money forcing people to get help when we could be helping people who want it? Tell your Dori Monson and Jason Rantz to support income tax so we can have for single payer healthcare with full mental health benefits.
Choosing to live on the streets should be proof enough that they are a danger to themselves.
Willingly injecting poison into their veins is proof enough that they are a danger to themselves.
The lifestyle they have chosen is a danger to themselves.
I’m okay with bringing back asylums. Even “Cuckoo’s Nest” is more compassionate than letting them live on the streets and under bridges..
This. Their behavior is proof. When you catch someone robbing a bank you don’t need to prove they robbed a bank before taking them into custody. Same should be true for homeless. If you really want to get picky, then have a special court like they have for child protective services. Heck, send a judge along with the pick-up team as they take people into custody. In short, let’s look for ways to solve the problem.
OK, great solution. A couple constitutional amendments, creating a new bureaucracy with its own court system to apply this novel legal theory. Oh, and then you have to actually fund all this incarceration and in-patient treatment. So easy!
What is WRONG with the Seattle City Council! Their JOB is to be passing amendments to the US Constitution! And making new courts! Lazy!
Childish, simplistic solutions, ignorant of the realities. Can you come up with something that hasn’t been struck down by numerous courts? Something that the city has the power to actually do? Or you’re just going to sit, and wait and wait and wait for the entire system to be upended?
Cite me a Supreme Court case that ruled a person who injects poison into their veins can not be ruled a danger to themselves?
Here, let me google that for you:
https://bit.ly/2C8rDU6
That’s Robinson v. California. Kansas v. Hendricks. Etc.
I never said they “can not be ruled a danger to themselves”; I specifically said they *can* be involuntarily committed. I wrote (scroll up a little bit): “You can, if you can *prove* they are a danger to themselves. You have to know them. You have to have them examined them by a qualified professional. They get a competent legal defense, and they can have professionals dispute the claim that they are a danger to themselves.” Cost? $$$$
You have to go to court and you have to bring psychological evaluations, which all costs money.
Also, how you going to pay for all this rehab? How many times have I asked you guys where you’re going to get all this free money?
Kansas v Hendricks isn’t fully applicable in this case as it was about extending the incarceration of child molesters after their prison sentence was served.
Robinson v. California can be worked around. It criminalized being an addict. I’m not talking about criminalizing being an addict, I’m talking about using their addiction and their compulsive behavior to show they are a continuing danger to themselves. Finding a medical professional to state that continued unsheltered life as an intravenous drug user is a danger to oneself shouldn’t be hard.
There are many fully constitutional means to address this issue. Since the park closes at 11:30 their camping in it is breaking the law. This gives the police the right to make contact. At that contact identities can be checked against wants, warrants, and violations. While being an addict is not illegal open drug use is, as is possession of opioids. An arrest is of course legal grounds for a search, so stolen property can be found.
As for paying for this we already spend over $70 Million a year to no effect. By the admission of many advocates of the homeless Share/Wheel is incapable of creating shelters that are safe for the residents to stay in. That alone should be enough to defund Share/Wheel completely.
I also think taxes could be raised for this purpose and to fund additional police to carry out the patrols, and to fund hospitalization at Western State. I opposed the head tax for a number of reasons, not the least was the incompetence of the City Council, and the unspecified nature of how the funds were to be spent. If the funds were to be used to pay for more police and inpatient mental health care the opposition to the tax would have been considerably less.
You must think I’m a knuckle-dragging Trump supporter So I’m sure it will surprise you that I’m a liberal Democrat. Hell I was a Jesse Jackson Delegate to the ’88 State Convention. No native to the PNW though I moved here from another liberal American city. Though that city is considerably more diverse than Seattle, and has a longer history of electing POC to office, it is quite similar to Seattle. While the electorate there consistently sends liberal Democrats to the city council and mayor’s office they also expect results, and aren’t afraid of voting incompetence out of office.
Well I’m not seeing results from this City Council and am ready to vote against my local representative Mike O’Brien. I’m hoping Sara Nelson lives in the District and chooses to run again, as she is a good solid liberal Democrat who would probably trounce O’Brien in the general. But I’m getting to the point where I’m not picky. If it came down to a race between O’Brien and Goodspaceguy, at this point I think I’d vote GoodSpaceGuy.
Sigh. I think I love you Wiz…
Phony sock puppet. You’re not fooling anybody. Give it up already.
Those cases defined the parameters of how you can involuntarily commit anybody. They set down the ground rules of how you can do it, and they all agreed on one thing: you can’t skirt due process.
And now you’ll cite examples of anywhere in the US that is locking up drug addicts without an expensive court procedure. And is getting the money for rehab from…?
I don’t think you’re a knuckle dragging Trump supporter. You seem drunk, and you seem like someone who doesn’t read. Sometimes you skim. Mostly you’re a hater who thinks life is fair, because you’re just another sock.
“I was a Jesse Jackson Delegate to the ’88 State Convention” One of the ways you can pick out a Harley sock puppet is how he tries to snow you with some biographical backstory like “I was at woodstock, man!” or “I’ve been a total lib all my life”. Harley — and his idols Jason Rantz and Dori Monson — think that there’s some kind of liberal shibboleths which, if you say them, they give you magic credibility.
Last time he tried it was with one of his parody screen names — he picks a topical thing, and riffs on it. Like “elenchos” -> Thales. Thales was a true liberal like you! What happened to old Thales, Harley?
So now there’s this new wizard bar in Ballad, and Harley (or Avril or David) responds with a relevant “Acting Wizard” screen name and the sock puppet thinks fucking Jesse Jackson is proof that you’re REAL. Jesse Jackson? Pathetic.
Whomever you pick to run against O’Brien will be another loser. See the above idiocy for why they will be a loser. O’Brien should be easy to defeat — as should Sawant, for God’s sake! — but you guys are THAT bad at this. Your basic problem is the truth is your kryptonite. You lie even when you don’t have to. You can’t not lie. People notice.
Some 20,000 new residents have moved to Seattle every year for the last 5-10 years. You think we’re all from rednecks from Orange County or something?
For those of us who moved here, we likely had a number of opportunities. One of the things that makes Seattle attractive is that it’s solidly not in the Bible Belt and is solidly in the coastal or urban liberal part of the country.
But like I say other liberal cities have voters that actually expect results. Mayor of Chicago? Doesn’t matter how much you are loved if you screw up one blizzard then you are toast. Same holds true in Denver.
Seattle is a lot like a big Boulder Colorado. A fun liberal town overfilled with angsty-suburban-white-liberals. Seattle wishes it was racially diverse but can’t deal with the reality that it’s the only majority white city in the country with a population over 500,000.
I don’t know whether you’re some junkie stealing free wifi in the park, or one of the enablers from St. Luke’s, or Mike O’Brien (or one of his staff). It doesn’t matter.
Change is happening to Seattle. It’s not just a bunch of dingy crappy dive bars, being bull dozed for high-rises. It’s not just rezoning a city that’s 70 years overdue for a change in density. No the real change is you have a bunch of new voters, who are predominantly liberal, but come from places where city leaders are actually expected to be able to manage a metropolitan area.
Hmm I never thought of that. Maybe elenchos actually is one of the homeless people in the park. I mean elnchos has replied over 60 times just in this one thread. Who else would have that much free time?
“Maybe elenchos is actually….”
“Things Harley’s sockpupets say for $100, Alex!” The SS goons number one goal is to find out your real name, so they an dox you, swat you, harass you at work. They try to scare off anybody who shines a light on them.
Next this sock puppet is going to go off on that weird soy thing. That soy conspiracy fun. Go on, do it for us.
It was fairly obvious from the get go.
Jail House Lawyer? Check
A little paranoid? Check
Obsessive defense of even the most vile behavior? Check
And his inability to distinguish disparate writing style and sentence structures is certainly amusing, though it’s more likely a defense mechanism t protect his bubble.
Gee, it’s all so simple the way you explain it? Neat and tidy little stereotypes. And you speak for… let’s see… 100,000 people? “We”, right? You should run for office. They’ll love you.
I’ve thought about it. But I actually really enjoy my job and would be sad to leave it. And having only lived here 4 years I’d feel like a carpetbagger.
Sooooo….what’s your brilliant solution? Decorate the tents so they’re more attractive?
Who told you there had to be a solution? We have the most regressive taxation in the country, where inequality is worse than it has been in a century. The city’s population has exploded with wealthy tech workers, bidding up the rents of even the least desirable housing, and squeezing everyone else out. The nimbys obstruct and subvert every effort to seriously increase the housing stock. More than two thirds of the city is zoned single family, and those parts where you can build are under constant attack by Lesser Seattle.
As long as all that is true, don’t expect any solution. We can at least not be wantonly cruel. Also, we could have not pissed away $10,000 on nothing. Ten grand is ten grand.
I fail to see the connection between wealthy tech workers moving to this city and junkies shooting up and setting up camp in Ballard Commons Park.
You are making the common mistake of thinking the vagrancy in Seattle is somehow connected to the price of housing. It’s not an affordable housing issue it is a law enforcement issue. It won’t be solved by providing affordable housing. It will be solved by a willingness to enforce the law.
none of the tent bums were just priced out of their homes – i’ll bet my next paycheck on it.
So what? That’s not how markets work.
Read the Washington post link I posted above, or any of the others. When the supply of housing is squeezed by rising demand at the top, the ones who can’t afford the most expensive luxury housing bid up the prices of mid range houses and rental apartments. Now the middle renters are pushed out and bid up the prices of the low end units. Cheaper apartments are renovated and put on the market at higher prices, in direct response to the influx of highly paid workers. The former residents can’t afford them any more.
The least secure people, those housed but just getting by, are tipped over the edge into homelessness. The people at the bottom are the ones least able to survive economic disruption. Back when demand was low, or at least normal, some landlords tolerated tenants who were struggling and behind on their rent. But knowing there’s high-paid workers lined up waiting to take that apartment, they don’t cut them any slack. An unemployed worker being supported by employed roommates could stay housed long enough to find a job when rents are stable. But when the working roommates have rent hikes to pay, they can’t afford it, so they find a different roommate and somebody becomes homeless.
Everyone thinks a booming economy is great, but there are casualties. One of the fundamental reasons behind progressive taxation and a social safety net is because of precisely what we see here.
Yep, you fail to understand:
“Seattle has a serious homelessness problem that has been exacerbated by the growth in high-paying jobs there”
http://fortune.com/2018/05/15/amazon-seattle-homeless-tax-passed/
“Exhibit 1 suggests the real cause. It shows how homelessness has risen in line with the fair-market rent (FMR), which in turn has increased in line with the county’s strong economic growth. ”
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/meeting-societys-expectations/the-economics-of-homelessness-in-seattle-and-king-county
“Seattle has a booming economy and high-wage jobs. But too many residents are being pushed out in the face of rising housing and living costs, and the growth in our economy has not been shared nearly widely enough.”
“According to the Census Bureau, Seattle was the fastest growing city in the nation, increasing our population by almost 19 percent over the past ten years. Affordable housing development coupled with rising rents in the private market has not kept pace with the need.”
https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/the-roots-of-the-crisis
“In expensive cities, rents fall for the rich — but rise for the poor”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-expensive-cities-rents-fall-for-the-rich–but-rise-for-the-poor/2018/08/05/a16e5962-96a4-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html?utm_term=.cf652d9632cc
“To understand how we got here, you have to go back at least to the early 2000s, when a high-tech bubble fueled rising home prices in the Seattle area and the federal government cut funding for homeless services and low-income housing.”
http://archive.kuow.org/post/after-10-year-plan-why-does-seattle-have-more-homeless-ever
nope, none of the junkie bums at commons park were displaced by high rents. not one.
Sure, tell yourself that. Just maybe don’t act so shocked when the reality-based community takes facts and research and expert judgement seriously. The alternative is to trust the ravings of clowns like Jason Rantz or Dori Monson.
Most people ignore right wing clowns. Obviously! At least accept that basic truth.
Why do you cling so hard to such shaky generalizations? Because your whole world rests on on the belief that life is fair. As soon as you start to allow for the possibility that life isn’t fair, your belief system starts to crumble, and you’ve tied your identity to that belief system.
Doesn’t even address the other side of the coin: of course some people in poverty or in crisis have made bad choices. But some people in houses have made bad choices.
Why should I have any sympathy for housed people who can’t pay their property taxes or who want to tax me for more police or whatever it is they think they need, when I know some of them brought their own misfortunes on themselves? Some of them are even malevolent, and I’d be better off without them.
Once you get me to agree to pick and choose whom to care about, you’ve gone and lost my support for most of the government help that Ballard’s ever-beleaguered middle class homeworkers incessantly cry about.
Want the city to protect you from apartment building towering over your back yard? Want the city to make developers build big parking garages so the tenants don’t all park in front of your house? Want lower property taxes? Too bad, suckers, because some of you aren’t worthy. No compassion from me.
It works both ways. I don’t find homeless people any more or less unpleasant than you and your narcissistic housed cohort. I don’t help them because I like them, and I don’t help you all because I like you.
“Why should I have any sympathy for housed people who can’t pay their property taxes …?”
You shouldn’t. People are paying higher property taxes because the value of their homes has increased.
You are right about some things, the SFH zoning in Seattle is out of control and the city should have been densified 30 or 40 years ago.
What you are wrong about is the assumption that zoning, or growth, or Amazon, or housing prices have anything to do with the vagrants in the Commons or any other tent on any other sidewalk in Seattle.
$1.00 a month is too expensive for someone who’d rather shoot heroin than work.
As you said life is not fair. If you screw your life up so much that you are reduced to setting up a tent in a city park then you are deserving of no compassion. Just a swift kick by law enforcement, until you move your sorry behind out of town.
“What you are wrong about is the assumption that zoning, or growth, or Amazon, or housing prices have anything to do with….”
It’s not an assumption. It’s the conclusion of numerous studies by qualified experts, using real world data collection. All this online “durrrr junkies bad! They don’t wan’t help!” is anti-intellectual prejudice, mostly based on anecdotes with a total data set of 1. Conservatives, already clinging to their belief that life is fair, willingly believe that narrative and invent wild conspiracy theories to explain away all the evidence and research telling them they’re wrong.
They have this bizarre “Homeless Industrial Complex” they invented, which is a cabal of rich developers, politicians, and junkies who somehow profit from tents on the sidewalk. It’s reminiscent of the “International Jew” and it’s about as dumb as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But what makes a fascist a fascist is the mental gymnastics they’re willing to do to make it sound true in their own mind.
Who the heck ever said life is fair? Life is not fair. Not the least bit, never was never will be. If Seattle is too expensive for you to live in, then go live someplace else. Tacoma, Spokane, Boise? Heck I bet housing is pretty darn cheap in Akron, Ohio right now.
You are absolutely right that life is not fair. So get over it. Put on your big boy pants, and move someplace you can afford to live.
Conservatives think life is fair. They won’t admit it. They forever deny it.
But it’s why they get so angry when you try to help the poor or tax the rich. They believe everyone gets what they deserve and if you meddle with that, then you’re punishing the worthy at the top and coddling the unworthy at the bottom.
junkie thieves deserve nothing from the public…not one thing. especially not free housing in one of the more expensive cities in the US. they could easily live their crappy lives in arkansas or kansas.
So could you. Nobody is forcing you to sit here drowning in rampant liberalism. Jason Rantz is here because he makes a living pandering to your kind. Dori Monson too. You’re their herd of sheep waiting to be sheared. So you’re what keeps them here, but what keeps you here? You hate Seattle, so why torture yourself?
Perhaps they do, I don’t know.
As for me I’ve never thought life was fair, because it’s not. Do you think in a fair world someone like Trump would have gotten close to the White House? Do you think in a fair world Mitch McConnell would have been able to rob Obama of a Supreme court pick? In a fair world Obama would have been able to pass a public option, or medicare for all, including mental health services.
But we don’t live in a fair world. We live in a world where Mitch McConnell was able to spend eight years blocking every attempt at progress, only to be rewarded with an egotistical idiot as President, who as crazy as he might be, will sign any bill Mitch puts on his desk.
The world is not fair. So maybe in this not fair world deciding to shoot heroin into your veins is not such a good idea.
I know it blows your mind to find there are liberals who detest junkies just as much if not more than conservatives. Heck liberals probably hate junkies more than conservatives do. Conservatives have that whole religion thing, you know hate the sin, love the sinner. That’s why they set up those missions like St. Luke’s and Union Gospel to proselytize to the sinners.
I’m just a liberal atheist. There’s no hell, no heaven, no god, no devil, no sin, no sinners, no redemption. There’s just an unfair world and idiots who have decided to become junkies and camp out in a park. It’s not my business to care about them, or their fate. I just want to pay my taxes and have the police I pay for kick them out of the city.
You just contradicted numerous sources that have concluded over two decades that Seattle’s large homeless population is due to economic and market contradiction, and land use policy. Citing no facts, you call them “vagrants”. You said they’re a lot of “junkies shooting up.”
You don’t know them. But you have a strong picture in your head of what they are and how they ended up there. You are *certain* it’s because of their bad choices and their bad character.
You do think life is fair. You’re clearly in deep denial, because you’ve been dogmatically told that grownups *say* “life is not fair” but you kept your cherished belief that they are in a terrible situation because of their own defects. You blame them without knowing them.
Only one way you can blame them without knowing them: because you believe with all your heart that life is fair. And you are a sadly lacking in self-knowledge.
So tell me Socrates, did you finish your philosophy degree before moving into your RV or did you drop out?
Giving away your sockpuppetry again. “So tell me…”, “So tell us…” You’ve posted under many of your other fake names that I live in an RV, that I’m a junkie, that I live in a tent in Ballard Commons.
You’re one sad, lonely, pathetic guy who wakes up first thing in the morning and starts posting the same dumb dad jokes over and over. First thing Sunday morning you’re right at your computer using the fake names “Open-Ended Response” and “Tallahatchee Bridge”. Here you’re tag teaming between “guesty” and “Acting Wizard”.
Just pick one name and stick to it. Nobody is fooled by all these phony screen names.
Eye candy for the “we must do something” crowd. This just means keeping a few city employees on staff, paying their dues, and getting health care. Why not simply enforce existing laws? What happened to tough love? Please go camp at elencho’s place. They love human debris.
Someone should visit these tent campers in the middle of the night with an airhorn. Pretty soon they’d get the message and move on.
Another tactic is to pop your head in their tent and start filming with your phone.
Yeah, invade their privacy and post pictures of them on the SS Facebook! Classic Harley, David & Avril, the nastiest creeps online.
Possible bike parking? Or a place to hitch the dog up while visiting the library.
So no one can explain why the homeless miss their toilet by 100 feet and p*ss and sh*t in the bushes and on the library?
What part of ‘being oppressed’ causes one to drop your pants and lay some pipe down over a parking garage vent when’s there’s a perfectly good Honey Bucket across the street?
Why can’t the compassion brigade explain this to us?
We gave them a toilet. They sh*t in the bushes.
We gave then a shower and laundry place, they bath and wash in the fountains.
And if one isn’t capable of hitting the toilet accurately or using a shower what are the chances you can ever manage unsupervised indoor living like a civilized human?
Still no explanation from the hug-a-bum crowd why their charges can’t lay a deuce in the Honey Bucket instead of in the bushes and on the library 100 feet away.
….. sounds of crickets ……
Sound of crickets?
Look at the pictures. All your ranting about feces is just empty words out of your potty mouth. The park is fine. The library is fine. Everyone knows that. It was fine before and we can all see it’s fine now.
The city was inundated with emails and phone calls ginned up by Harley and Dave and Avril, and somehow the phony panic you guys whipped up got a response. They flushed $10k of your tax money down the toilet. YOUR money, genius.
And you’re celebrating. Your OWN money getting wasted. Want more photos of the clean park with no human waste anywhere? The shit is in you: you’re full of it.
Ah, found your own facts now.
You never set foot there did you? This is all hypothetical as far as you’re concerned. If I quizzed you on simple facts about the location you’ve been posting about — 20, 30 times? — could you answer them? You go on and on and on about the foul feces and poop and filth — but you’ve never been there. Have you? Want to prove it?
Favorite spot for one guy to drop a deuce is at the west edge of The Commons by that little cement building. I’ve seen a couple guys wee wee there too. Too far to go for the honey bucket. But, not too far for breakfast at the Church. Just like a pig.
Don’t want to be called a barnyard animal, then don’t act like one.
You can’t reason with someone who thinks that everything’s “fine,” and that library staff and its patrons are just “paranoid.”
I drove by the Commons park at 12:15 today. I saw a couple of mom’s with their small kids playing in the sprinklers seemingly having a good time. The rest of the inhabitants (about 12-15 people) were almost all homeless people. Three tents and a big pile of blankets and a guy in a turquoise Dodge pickup truck (he was a rather unsavory character that I can tell has a long history of substance abuse and criminal activity and yes I judge a book by it’s cover and yes I’m pretty good at it). Anyways, the park looks dirty and uninviting. Not somewhere I’d want to take my kids or hang out in. I’m sorry, it’s a public park not a campground. I’d like to know what it costs to maintain this park a year, it might shock you. Just wanted to report what I saw, I imagine I will have 30 down replies.
The factual part of your description is accurate. The subjective part is evidence of paranoia. Here is a panorama of the park at that exact time:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1862/29397862417_eff9c16732_o.jpg
Piles of refuse? Yeah, it existed:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1863/44285640482_8ab56cb843_b.jpg
https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1876/44285640122_cbbbaf9e68_b.jpg
Definitely not a visit to Disneyland. But if this place was too horrific for you to bear, you clearly wish you lived in a gated community (but don’t earn enough to afford one, *sad emoji*)
We’re looking at a clean, ordinary park here. The grass is perfectly “inviting”. If you’re not a paranoid who is terrified of being too near the poors.
https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1898/44285639922_90a41e131a_o.jpg
So YES, there were tents. Yes, there was trash by the trash cans. What about those nasty porta potties? Any truth to all that?
https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1849/44285640212_111a5dc600_b.jpg
Nope. It’s fine. Seattle is a city. An actual city. It’s not a gated commnity, it’s not Celebration, Florida. There is some ugliness there. Used needles are gross. Everyone hates them.
I didn’t take close ups of the normal people having a nice time, but they were right there, as usual. If there was anybody “unsavory”, it was a fantasy in the mind of someone who only thinks the worst.
Sell your Seattle property, and go buy a house twice as big in Kansas for 1/5 what you net. Live it up. Go! You’ll be happier. You don’t like cities. City life ain’t for you.
I dunno Elenchos, those Honey buckets look too far away. I’m going to take a sh*t and p*ss on the library. Be right back.
“I didn’t take close ups of the normal people having a nice time”
Yeah, better not get your name back on the sex offenders list.
“You don’t like cities. City life ain’t for you.”
I grew up in a city Elenchos. A real one, population over 8 million. Seattle is a big town at best. Since my “yoot” I’ve lived in 3 cities with populations that or larger.
Guess what, real city dwellers have no patience for this sh*t. It’s why my dad had a baseball bat in his car and a shotgun gun in his closet.
You know who says “City life ain’t for you”?
Woke, guilt-ridden suburban kids who move to mid-sized towns like Seattle and think they’re “city sophisticates” suddenly. Maybe a week on vacation in Amsterdam so they also can pretend to be well-traveled urbanists.
You didn’t include a picture of your criminal boyfriend in the Dodge pickup. What drugs is he selling?
Ah feminization: Harley’s favorite insult. It’s how we know it’s you.
I did see a guy sitting in a truck. It’s a thing people do. I actually saw a number of people sitting in cars. Could be drug dealers! Also, drug dealers sit on benches. Or walk. I saw people walking, and they could have been drug dealers.
This is why the police hang up now when you call to report “a guy sitting in a truck”. They know you and don’t have any more time to waste on your bullshit. It’s why you complain the “police can’t do anything”. They can’t do anything for YOU, because they know you’re full of shit.
I guarantee you I live in a hell of a lot nicer neighborhood that you do.
My neighborhood doesn’t have you in it. Can’t beat that.
Ya you missed the 4 tents that are setup directly behind you and the one in the other corner. The extremely wide angle shot also misses the trash and carts usually by the toilets and people camped out or crashed by the skate area. I’m sorry this is definately a misleading picture. You act like this is an inviting utopia. Ya I live here also. The Commons Park isn’t a ‘dangerous’ place. But it’s hardly inviting by any standard. Some people might be ok having their kids play in the fountain right next to a half dozen drunk or high homeless people, but I can certainly understand why others are not.
Yes. Tents. There are tents there. So what? The park itself is wide open, and clean. It has a sidewalk that’s 12 or 15 feet wide. In some places. a small part of the sidewalk has some tents there. There is nowhere where the sidewalk is obstructed. You and your friends could walk five abreast around the whole park and not be obstructed by anything.
You’re having a fit because the tents exist. They are there. That’s it. Their mere existence, the fact that you can see tents, is your whole problem. You should save your pennies and try to afford to live in a gated community, princess.
So tell us, how many tents are too many? What spacing must they have? How many people allowed per tent? How much space around each for ADA compliance? Will they need a variance if they add a garage closer than 6 feet to their neighbors? Are their roof lines up to code? If they sublet a room to some sweet honey they met on Aurora Ave do they also have to provide 30 days notice for eviction?
Can I reject city codes then or is “equity” only for those who dump needles on the ground rather than available sharp boxes and sh*t on pavements rather than pot-a-johns provided to them because they’re not house trained?
Asking for a friend.
Shit on pavement? Where? You think you can make up anything you want and post it and that makes it true. Delusional loon.
You’re right, they sh*t in the bushes and on stoops of businesses (just ask few). They also sh*t on the library’s grate, which drops through into the parking garage.
Which means my dog is better house trained.
Or can you explain why they can’t walk the 100 feet to one of the two Honey Buckets? Do they refuse to use corporate turd huts? Not fancy enough for them?
“Corporate Turd Huts” is the best thing I’ve read today. Kudos to you, good sir, for the chuckle.
What is your point even? You’re trying to prove that they’re really, really, really bad people because you claim they’re leaving feces all over? We can’t find any evidence of that. The area looks fine. We do know the city was getting non-stop complaints similar to yours: privileged nimbys freaking out, like they always do. Claiming it was a nightmare when we can see with our own eyes it is not. Haters shrieked and raged not because there really was a hazard, but merely because unhoused people existed. The park is clear. Sidewalks clear. And clean.
But lets say it’s true. Let’s just say that they shat on the sidewalks. OK. Now what? Is that an argument for illegal police brutality? Illegal arrests? Unconstitutional jailing of people for non-crimes like addiction or homelessness? Because they are really really really bad people who shit in the wrong places?
Your argument goes nowhere. It’s just you justifying hate. So here you are, with another reason to hate them, but no solutions.
Instead of being critical of the valid concerns of law abiding citizens, you could, elenchos, talk with the druggies you advocate for and tell them to USE THE HONEY BUCKET, DON’T CRAP ON THE STREET AND DON’T STEAL STUFF. Then you could also say, accept services and get job if you can. If you are druggie or use to much alcohol get help and into rehab.
Then the people here would stop their rants. But, I guess that solution is just too simple for your mind to grasp.
Yeah, because that’s how you cure drug addiction and mental illness: you tell them “hey, stop, ok?” and that works. THAT works? No, ya big baby baby, it doesn’t.
See the pattern? All your “solutions” are childishly simplistic. Something a 6 year old would think of. And when the grownups don’t follow your simplistic, useless suggestions, you fly into a rage because they’re “not doing their jobs”.
And “accept services and get job if you can.” Because you are a conservative who thinks life is fair. Life gives EVERYONE a job and a way to succeed. Life is FAIR. Anyone and everyone who isn’t successful has themselves to blame. They REFUSE to take advantage of all the great opportunities life offers EVERYONE. No exceptions.
Conservatives can’t wrap their minds around the idea that there are people to whom life was not fair. Life dealt a bad hand to some. They did all the things you’re supposed to do, and STILL, they have nothing. Just like some total morons are born with everything, make nothing but mistakes their whole life and end up President. Life. Is. Not. Fair.
Some rich people are rich because they deserve it. Some poor people are poor because they deserve it. Some rich people are rich even though they don’t deserve it. Some poor people are poor even though they don’t deserve it. That is what “life is unfair” means. Conservatives say they know life is not fair, but then when it comes time to show it, the continually demonstrate that they believe with all their hearts that it IS fair. Babies.
Keep in mind, I didn’t come here to be critical of anyone’s valid concerned. I came here to criticize taking $10,000 of our tax money and throwing it down the drain on useless window dressing for paranoid complainers. If you get your way, they’ll be sending another $10,000 down the tubes on some other dumb theatrics, and another ten grand. And another. It apparently makes you happy to waste money, all while you claim you want money well spent.
This is why Seattle sucks. There are only two sides. Either let the homeless camp wherever they want or jail them all.
How about some middle ground to say, at least no tents in parks and sidewalks?
Big Poo is right up there with Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Tobacco of things that get my knickers in twist.
Corporations aren’t people! Nationalize all toilets!
I voted the Big Poo ticket.
I know I just posted several extremely clear photos of Ballard Commons Park. The park IS clear. The sidewalks ARE clear. What is the problem? There are 8 to 12 tents there. The park is clean. The grass is clean. People are enjoying the park. The sidewalks are in no way blocked or dirty.
What is all this bitching about? Why did we have to flush $10,000 down the crapper? Can we not throw another $10,000 away for nothing?
Just walked by 10 minutes ago. Only saw bums in the park in various stages of intoxication along with the illegal KOA campsites. Trash strewn about and heard one good scream of “bitch!!!!!” but couldn’t pinpoint that so to be safe I’ll assume that was some gainfully employed dad talking to his daughter.
Careful, you’re starting to sound less Millenial and more like a Hater! The parks and sidewalks are open spaces for all, hence, the homeless are allowed to use them as their homes – homes you and I pay taxes on, while they pay none, but treat ‘our’ shared spaces (theirs, yours, and mine), as solely ‘their’ space. They will threaten you with violence and leave their disease-spreading needles and sometimes human waste their to mark their territory, like dogs. Only my dog has more common sense than most of our ‘shared space’ campers.
Any money left over for air fresheners?
I drove by the park today just after noon. There were a bunch of homeless inhabiting the park as usual. There was a couple people sleeping and a schizophrenic gentlemen talking to himself and another guy picking his scabs. Delightful. That old blue car has a orange move your car now sticker on it. The homeless criminal in the pickup was there as was a white van parked across the street. As I was driving on the north side of the park I made eye contact with some young homeless punk in a black tank top. He mouthed some threatening remark at me. I couldn’t make out what it was but I’m going to go by there again tomorrow and if I see him and he says something there will be a confrontation.
“homeless criminal in the pickup”? Just stop. If you witnessed a crime, why didn’t you call 911? You’re making shit up, because they internet lets you lie with impunity. You don’t like some guy and you call him a criminal.
Maybe he is. But most criminals are housed. Criminals exist. We try to arrest then when we have a good reason to. You’d ask the cops to go on a snipe hunt with a guy in a truck you don’t like the looks of.
You’re failing to mention that there were also a bunch of OTHER people using the park. Because they park is fine. I was there. I took pictures.
The grass is wide open, and clean. The benches are wide open, clean. Sidewalk, not blocked, and clean. The park is fine but you, personally, can’t deal with the existence of people you don’t like to look at. The families and children had no problem. Talking to your self is not a crime. Neither is picking scabs, which I’m pretty sure one of the kids was doing too. Kids do that.
Photos prove you wrong. Shall I post more of them?
” the internet lets you lie with impunity.”
So says the self-proclaimed “public intellectual”.
That public intellectual thing really burns you up, doesn’t it? If you didn’t constantly make a fool of yourself over it, I’d go delete it, but it still has a lot of miles left in it, even after all these years.
You guys have a real problem with overlooking slight annoyances. I can’t even imagine what a coddled background you come from that you can fixate on something like “public intellectual” or a guy parking illegally or sitting on a bench and obsessively complain about it. I bet if I put a pea under a hundred mattresses, I could prove you’re a true princess.
I’m pissed because you morons managed to goad the city into wasting 10,000 real dollars. You’re pissed because an internet screen name has a description that says “public intellectual” and some guy sat in a blue pickup.
lol, erica, you are just a petty thief. stealing wine? lol!!!
Yep. There it is. You have no facts, no rational basis for anything. Angry old guy with a lot of hate, and you spew insults in all directions hoping you hit something. Maybe you can find our someone’s real name and harass them until they feel threatened.
You’re going to keep losing. Get used to that.
its a fact tat you are a wine thief, erica!! its ok, i forgive you. once people go feral its tough to get back.
Repeating yourself, eh? I think we know who’s been at the wine today.
You’re like the Mayor of Brat Land.
Yes, please do. Make sure you take them early in the morning.
How about we arrest the junkies and sex offenders instead, so that our libraries can be used safely by FAMILIES for LEARNING instead of as hangouts for criminals and drug dealers?
Sadly, you can make learning and information FREE – a resource many people in less developed nations DO NOT HAVE and many still choose to make drugs and crime their way of life. Sadder still, many supposedly “educated people” squander their neighbors’ tax dollars on these losers.