Many US issues come from where we place the borders of our local governments. Local was more meaningful before the car, but with increased mobility that’s no longer the case.
Even today undoing those boundaries is fraught by the specter of history. https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/fears-about-ma...
If we want to solve racial issues in our society we have to stop demonizing people for wanting good things for themselves and their families as being racially motivated, when the racial correlation is almost purely incidental.
I’m a fourth generation resident of Tacoma, WA just south of Seattle, so I might be able to shed some light on what’s been happening. Please pardon spelling errors, I’m typing this on my phone.
Washignton state is very passive aggressive as a whole. You see it in the politics as well as the people themselves. In this case, Seattle does want to help the homeless but doesn’t want to make the effort to build a proper facility. We’re quick to jump in social issues like gay marriage, but will absolutely balk at anything that requires more money, time, or effort. So Seattle, in the most passive way possible, stops enforcing public camping laws.
There are other significant components to it as well. In the case of the Seattle Police, they just got shaken down by the Dept of Justice for corruption and racial profiling as well as by the WA State Supreme Court (the death penalty ban cites a Seattle prosecutor being openly racist on the record in King County Court). My guess is that the police is being super careful right now to avoid another legal confrontation, so a lot of grey area stuff (like homelessness - illegal to camp but they gotta sleep soemwhere) doesn’t get enforced. The freeway camps get even trickier since they’re on Department of Transportation land, which only the State Patrol has legal jurisdiction on under current law (city laws don’t affect highway land).
https://www.realchangenews.org/2019/03/20/komo-asserts-seatt...
One anecdote I've heard through my brother, who has been in law enforcement and monitors things in our old home region. He told me an officer he knew left the force because those types of restrictions were becoming untenable to deal with. Secondhand, so take this, too, with a grain of salt.
I know it's not a one size fits all solution by any means, and has the potential for tons of liberty infringing issues, but it sounds better than doing nothing.
That's what gp didn't like. What do you think since you seem to want a better option. Is that better than jail as a default?
It's supposed to do what you want without prison.
I think we do have data on how well the current system works.
The two programs being what? I know Seattle is having a lot of troubles even implementing them well due to stigmas so I don't know if we even have finished.
I do anecdotally know one of my hyper liberal teacher friends was against them on the east side as she associated heroin use with only downtown Seattle homeless. When I pointed out they were more likely to use the center downtown instead of a 2 hr bus ride and the ones on the east side were for all the people you hear about being hooked on oxygen... She actually started thinking about it instead of just reacting. It's a hard sell with a lot of stigma and fud around it.
It's not my goal to argue you one way or another in a post like this. It's my goal that you actually make an informed decision instead of an uninformed one off of anecdotal data.
* Which also implies a lack of readily available drugs - and guards who aren't accepting bribes to let them in.
If anything, local publications like The Stranger are skewed towards the far-left and keep playing up a misplaced "compassion" angle that serves to stifle any pragmatic counter-arguments through a vague moral argument. And of course, the city council (literally all its current members) is completely inept and has been gas-lighting residents this entire time, as if we can't see the trash, the drug abuse, the usurping of public spaces by transient campers, the rise of crime, etc.
Lastly, claiming that folks in Amazon's pockets shouted down the head tax is not a balanced evaluation. My read of discussions online were that many people were against it, from all walks of life, from all parts of the political spectrum except perhaps the far-left. Construction workers, who don't have the easiest or the most well-compensated job, were the ones shouting down Kshama Sawant's head tax (see their counter-protest at https://youtu.be/ycEa1l01_A0). And it's not just the Amazon ecosystem - over 100 businesses signed a letter to the council against the head tax (https://www.seattlebusinessmag.com/policy/more-100-seattle-b...).
> we had an attempt to tax big companies to get some money to deal with this get shouted down by all the folks in Amazon's pockets.
It sounds like people need to vote for politicians with spines then if shouting them down is all it takes, assuming the majority of people actually wanted it because they believed it would solve the problem.
> assuming the majority of people actually wanted it because they believed it would solve the problem.
The poster is omitting that most people in Seattle were opposed to the tax, because it would have significantly harmed labor unions and regional businesses, like grocery stores.
The Seattle city council crafted a tax without consulting businesses about how economics works, doubled down and told people to stuff it when they pointed out that it was going to damage the local economy by crippling mid-tier businesses that had high-gross, low-margin revenues, and were then forced into an embarrassing retreat when labor unions started campaigning against it and neighborhood organizations circled the wagons to protect their historic businesses.
It was also a pocket change, feel good tax: Seattle spends over a billion dollars a year on poverty, between low-income subsidies and homelessness, and has nothing but a degrading situation to show for it.
People in Seattle just have a simple question: both Amazon and the SCC have spent about $25B over the past decade -- Amazon to rebuild SLU, and the SCC on anti-poverty; why does Amazon have a campus and tens to hundreds of thousands of lives changed, while the SCC has literal poop on the streets to show for it?
I will live here for a few more years for sure. But if the SCC keeps on this same path, and Seattle turns into SF I'm leaving. It's sad, because I've been living here off and on since 2011 and I genuinely love the PNW, since it's got everything I want - access to nature and the water, smart people that I'd consider starting a company with, and a beautiful aesthetic. I'm not the only one that feels this way. Coworkers, especially those who just had kids or are about to, plan on leaving for the suburbs or ditching the city altogether.
Edit: was googling city council videos and, well, here's an example of what I mean: