Amazon moves employees out of downtown Seattle office due to crime
geekwire.com
geekwire.com
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/03/04/67776468/the-peo...
I think it's great reading for anyone who believes homelessness is an issue that can be solved by throwing free housing at people.
Here's an excerpt -
>Andre said he has struggled with homelessness on and off since he was 14. That’s when he started selling at 3rd and Pine. He’s been there almost everyday since. He’s 30 now.
“You get caught up,” Andre said when I asked him why he’s spent half his life on this corner. “You make your first sale, you get a little money. Then you’re 30 and you’re still at 3rd and Pine.”
>Andre lives in an apartment thanks to a city-run housing program, but he doesn’t have a job other than selling flipped merchandise. Over the last two years, the government has forked over financial relief to taxpayers with formal jobs, but people like Andre, who work informal jobs, have not seen such benefits.
By "informal jobs", they actually mean selling stolen merchandise.
>I asked Andre what the city could do to get people to stop selling at 3rd and Pine. He said the city could give them something else to do: “Maybe build a basketball court? Somewhere to shoot hoops?”
The logic being presented here is that because the government has only given them free housing and not a free place to play basketball, it's reasonable to expect that they'll fill their days selling stolen goods. By building somewhere to shoot hoops, the problem could be solved.
This is a city where nearly any deli or corner-store has a We're Hiring sign and will gladly pay people under the table. Homelessness is a social phenomenon, not an economic wart caused by expensive housing.
Painting Seattle as the crime capital of the nation is the most hyperbolic thing I’ve ever read on this site. By miles. Get real lol.
By definition, if you give someone a home, they are not homeless.
"Andre lives in an apartment"
So he's not homeless.
"Homelessness is a social phenomenon, not an economic wart caused by expensive housing."
The problem with Andre is that he steals stuff. He's not homeless. Not every homeless person steals stuff or is an evil person.
The problem is the money is going to the wrong people. There are a lot of good and honest people that are homeless and/or struggling to pay their rent. Andre isn't one of them. Andre gets his housing for free while other people freeze and are basically forced to kill themselves. Why is that?
Here's a very relevant paper on the issue, where the researcher concludes a number of suggestions, including "we need to consider ceasing to use prison as punishment" and "we should draw on the research of what we know works to prevent recidivism, especially literacy programs, skills training and GED, as well as educating prisoners to associate’s degree level in higher education and restore financial support for these successful practices": https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258834307_On_the_Ef...
> spending time in jail for... stealing a pack of diapers?
That's disingenuous at best. These people steal hundreds of items and setup tables selling them. This isn't a mother stealing formula or diapers for her child. It's a criminal operation stealing stuff by the trash bag (as we have seen in many videos over the past few years) in cities with very loose theft laws (mostly on the west coast).
I must beg the question, if nothing is being done to address this person's asocial behavior, how on Earth will they become a productive and positive member of society? Many of these people have learned they can get more of what they want by breaking the law than by living within it.
People like me who are gainfully employed, pay taxes, and don't steal look at the lawlessness and genuinely start to wonder why we even bother upholding the social contract when there seems to be no interest in applying it anymore.
Yes. Consequences are a deterrent. You will never be able to know for sure how many acts of theft weren't carried out because the person decided the reward wasn't work the risk of getting caught and going to jail. It seems self-evident that theft will rise when deterrents are dramatically curtailed. No one was suggesting that the threat of jail/prison would prevent all theft.
>"What's the return on investment for sending someone to jail over diapers stolen from a Walgreens?"
This is intangible. There will never be a satisfactory answer because there are just too many variables. How much theft was prevented by merit of being in jail? Is it possible going to jail made this person re-evaluate their life? Maybe some cashier's life was saved because a confrontation never took place. The theoreticals are endless.
Until they're released. At which point they'll have an even harder time getting a job, they'll be even more alienated and broken, and they'll likely only be able to associate with other criminals. Sounds like a recipe for increasing crime.
> Consequences are a deterrent.
Not really. If your options are "die" or "face potential consequences" you choose the latter every time.
I really doubt that "I don't want to go to prison" is why most people don't commit crime. They don't commit crime because... crime sucks, it's not fun, and it's not really necessary for most people. The people who do crime aren't like "haha they won't prosecute me, sweet, finally I can go commit crimes". They're desperate.
This seems so obvious.
> This is intangible.
Kind of a cop out. The reality is that people who go to prison have an extremely high rate of ending up back in prison, often for even worse crimes.
This doesn't explain vandalism, joyriding, or kleptomania. Additionally, the notion that "it's not really necessary for most people" is true, but misleading. But have you considered that some people realize theft is an easier alternative to being gainfully employed? Why bother putting up with a boss and paying taxes when I can steal a single catalytic converter and make $2K under the table? That's like a month's worth of salary gained in 20 minutes.
>"The people who do crime aren't like "haha they won't prosecute me, sweet, finally I can go commit crimes". They're desperate."
I don't think you have ever met a criminal. Some are desperate, but why can't you recognize that crime is lucrative and a preferable alternative for these people? For lots of people, if they can get away with it, they'll do it. Their conscience doesn't bother them like it would for you and I.
These are pretty minor crimes lol I'll be really happy if we get to a point where we have to worry about these things.
> But have you considered that some people realize theft is an easier alternative to being gainfully employed?
I mean, yes, I've considered it. I dismissed it because it's sort of idiotic. Is it better than working a job with no healthcare, benefits, a minimum wage, and the chance to be fired at any time with no safety nets? Sure, yeah. We should fix that.
> why can't you recognize that crime is lucrative and a preferable alternative for these people?
We both agree that crime is preferable for some people. We just disagree about why.
> Their conscience doesn't bother them like it would for you and I.
Years of living in an abusive society, learning that crime is a survival mechanism, etc, will naturally do that to anyone.
"Pretty minor crimes, lol". I sense you live in a nice area and have lived a sheltered life. You may not have to worry about such things, but plenty of people are not so fortunate. Have you ever had your home broken into? Your family's car stolen and joyridden? I have, multiple times. It's easy to write these things off as minor concerns when it's not happening to you.
Even though fencing shit is exactly the same as many retail jobs, except for the source of the goods
The store has to be able to recuperate the loss there. That means either:
1. Higher prices (and for a region that isn't doing well.. they can't afford it and are pushed futher to steal more to survive)
or
2. The store can't survive in that region (Good bye Target on the south side of chicago.. hello food desert once again..also job losses of people trying to make it legitmately) https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-target-closin...
When you punish someone for shoplifting sufficently enough: That means for the time that they're now occupied they can't shoplift, and others do not see continued shoplifting for them. (This is also how violent crimes work as well..)
Honest question: how do we know that this works? And more importantly, where does incarceration as a deterrent not work (e.g. where are the bounds)? Do you have a source?
Well when they're locked up.. they can't go to walgreens and steal a bucket of tidepods.
Sources: No unfortunately I don't. Most of the articles I've seen on this tend to have a bias against punishment for crime and tend to over inflate "corrupt enforcement". (Rather than to discuss the full situation, statistics and societal cost)
My understanding is that crime is mostly a young person's thing. The older people get the less likely they're to commit crime. Prison as a way of aging people out is effective. At best it can prevent people from falling back with the people who go them in the situation.
This makes sense; younger people tend to be less risk averse. Not sure if “aging people out” is the right solution: people who get out of prison usually have worse prospects than when they go in, so (assuming older people are in fact less likely to commit crime) we’d be trading one social problem for another (health/welfare/homelessness).
Also, from an ethical standpoint, I don’t think I could get behind long incarceration times and strict punishments for petty crimes just to reduce the rate of crime. These are real (young) people with lives that are being upended for some mistakes.
But whenever I wait for the bus at 3rd and Pine (we did on Saturday), I don't see much hope like you do.
edit: To elaborate, the "at some point" is like... where a person has to be removed from society because they're an imminent danger to themselves or others.
We'd like our city back please.
But is it a solution?
If Andre gets out of prison and goes back to stealing, then that process may well have wasted more money than many social programs for the exact same outcome. Imprisoning people is really expensive.
If Andre never gets out of prison at all, then we're committing to indefinitely spending a ton of money on him for the rest of his life, which also is not an amazing outcome. And that's only a theoretical possibility anyway, selling stolen goods (even habitually) is probably not going to get you a life-sentence in prison.
I think people have this perspective on incarceration that it's the final catch-all solution, and the reason we avoid it is purely compassion. And compassion is part of it, sure, but also if prison sentences don't reduce recidivism, then they're not a working solution. You should look at prison recidivism rates and apply the same level of skepticism and hold prison spending to the same standards that you apply to social programs and public housing. You should have the same expectations for both public housing and for what is essentially a much more expensive form of "coerced housing".
Asking how far we should go to reform someone before we give up and incarcerate is kind of begging the question -- it assumes that incarceration is always solution that just blanketly works and the only reason we avoid it is out of compassion and morality. In reality, incarceration is just another tool in the toolbox, and sometimes it might solve a problem, and sometimes it won't -- sometimes it's a complete waste of time and money.
Also, you used "begging the question" properly! I'm weirdly refreshed by that having just seen it misused in another comment.
I'd bet the percentage of people that would rather pay to imprison people, rather than deal with the treatment / relapse loop is at least 25%. Likely even higher if you take it as a percentage of the gainfully employed.
But that logic, anything society accepts is an answer. You could just as easily say that society accepting high crime rates is an answer.
You're right that policies often reflect public opinion, but when we're debating policy ideally the conversation would go deeper than that. Public discussions about policy in the open, on forums, etc, is a big part of how public opinion gets formed, and those discussions should probably dig into underlying goals and identify the costs and benefits of different approaches beyond just checking what the current majority preference is. Things can get a little circular when being popular is the justification for why something is popular.
What is the alternative? Just let them keep taking dumps on society until they finally go too far and bash someone's head in with a baseball bat (like that poor girl in Belltown a few months ago)? Incarceration shouldn't be the first answer, but it might very well be the tenth or eleventh...if only to actually protect everyone else.
If all your compassion does is allow for someone to destroy themselves (like decriminalize drugs and provide safe places for people to pursue their addictions), then is that the alternative?
For petty crime like fencing stolen goods, they are looking at a few weeks in jail at most. Not going to change their outlook very much, but will probably discourage them from fencing goods out in the open (at least in Seattle). This focus on petty crime works well for Bellevue (but forces the problem on Seattle).
The current crackdown, the cops aren't arresting anyone for fencing goods even when it's obvious what they are doing. Instead they are just telling them to leave (this happened a few times while we were waiting for the bus at 3rd and Pine a couple of days ago)...not a solution, they will definitely be back.
And yes, if the problem can't be solved locally (too harsh, push the problem somewhere else; too soft, attract more of the problem), why should be in the latter category? Is Seattle just a convenient sacrifice?
Do you know beyond intuition what the stats are on that? If we take an average person and put them in prison for fencing goods, statistically what is the most likely outcome when they come out?
- What are the odds they stop doing this in the open?
- What are the odds they stop doing this entirely?
- What are the odds they move on to something worse? How much worse will it be and are there ways to mitigate that outcome?
- On average, what is the ratio of percent reduction in visible crime to the amount of money we would spend per-person? Are those numbers better/worse than other alternatives that we've looked at?
- Is this a constant across multiple types of crime? Do the numbers become different when we look at petty crime or violent crime?
Have you looked into that stuff, or are you just assuming on intuition that the numbers are good? We're all kind of talking past each other here; I suspect most people on HN know in theory why prisons should work, and I suspect most people know in theory why social programs should work. So explaining the theory is not particularly valuable at this point.
These numbers are really complicated, they're difficult to measure because of confounding variables and implementation details. There are ways of running prisons that make recidivism rates higher or lower, so it's not even an across-the-board single statistic. But that should be the baseline of where any conversation about this stuff starts.
Again, this assumes incarceration works, which you don't get to just assume.
If someone comes out of prison and then bashes someone's head in with a bat, then the incarceration didn't work. You're still looking at this from a perspective of, "we have an answer that will work, but we want to avoid it when possible." And that's not the reality, sometimes incarceration doesn't fix the problem.
> What is the alternative? [...] If all your compassion does is allow for someone to destroy themselves (like decriminalize drugs and provide safe places for people to pursue their addictions), then is that the alternative?
I think that part of looking for an alternative should be trying to find out if the alternative produces better results than what we're already doing. If prison doesn't produce lower recidivism rates than social programs, then yeah, obviously the social programs are the correct alternative even if some people take advantage of them -- because we're not looking at a scenario where either system (social programs or prison) has 100% effectiveness at preventing crime.
Let me flip your own question back: if all your cruelty does is drive people into harder crime and more desperate actions when they get out of prison, then is that the alternative? The alternative to social programs is something that is wildly expensive and that is often ineffective at reforming behavior?
You have to look this stuff more pragmatically and less emotionally. We can have a conversation about the ethics of prison, and that can be an important conversation, but it really has nothing to do with the separate question of whether or not prison is practical and cost effective at keeping down crime levels. Both ethics and practicality matter for policy, but they are not dependent variables with each other -- something feeling harsher or crueler to you does not magically mean it works better.
I see a couple of problems:
- most prison terms are limited (any prison term for petty theft is going to be).
- prisons often release people into the same communities they came out of.
- it is tremendously expensive to even get someone into prison, you have to arrest them and either get them through a trial or at least pay for sentencing if they just plead guilty.
If the entire goal of prison is to separate offenders from society (which could be its own conversation, but whatever, we'll take it for granted that's the goal), we still kind of need to ask if prison is the best way of doing that.
Optimizing for cost is not what you want. The most cost effective way of separating people from society is a summary execution with no trial. Prisons aren't meant to be the cheapest solution, they're meant to be a more humane compromise.
Are jails a cost-effective way of separating people from society, even if we only look at solutions that are at least as humane as prison?
I'm sort of jumping around the main issue, which is that I don't think prisons only exist to separate people from society and I don't think most people think about them that way, not really. I think Camus up-thread is just wrong, prisons are about more than isolation. People think about prisons in terms of punishment/justice, and deterrence, and about organization/holding during trials, and yes, people also think about prisons as a rehabilitation effort.
If you look at prisons only through the lens of "this is where we put people we don't want to be around", then the system kind of stops making sense. It's not optimized for that.
I mean, if nothing else, you really have to grapple with the fact that most people don't get life sentences. If the person being discussed in this thread gets arrested and given 4 months in jail and then comes out back into the same community, then the public housing solution only really needs to keep him off the street for 5 months in order for it to be a cheaper and more effective solution -- unless prison is serving some other set of goals beyond just separating people from society temporarily, unless it's also trying to keep people outside of prison from committing crime, through both deterrence and rehabilitation.
But if you're just worried about removing people from society, prison is an awful way of doing that for low-level offenses; it's both incredibly stressful and cruel for the person being imprisoned, and incredibly expensive, and doesn't actually keep them separated from society for more than a few months to a year.
The US has a higher incarceration rate than other developed countries, while also maintaining higher crime/violence rates. It doesn't seem to be a good solution to the crime problem. Does Andre get out of prison? What then?
It may be more accurate to say, "At some point incarceration has failed and compassion is the only solution."
He either accepts the help again (housing, food, job, education, etc) and actually makes something of himself, or he commits more crimes and goes back to prison. Seems like a fairly straightforward deal to me.
Where is that missing? It is there today. The fact is that society bears the financial burden of someone spending a life in prison (and also the emotional/financial/physical burden of the person's actual crimes). You seem to be dismissing that to make an ideological stance.
Oh, we really suck at this, I admit! First, it should never have gotten to this point, and second, prisons should focus on fixing rather than punishing people. We are in agreement. But I don't think there are many options for Andre at this point (we should have done a better job 15 years ago). Washington state prisons are also a bit more on the reform side than other states in the country.
> It may be more accurate to say, "At some point incarceration has failed and compassion is the only solution."
Compassion should always come first, incarceration is a last ditch effort and means we have basically failed this person.
That's because the problems are much more systematic and large parts of the population approach the solution with monkey patching. So of course you'd think we've run out of solutions.
Cut out the jail. Put the exact same dollar amount towards universal health, food, income, and education programs.
Let's see which one produces a healthier outcome for our society as a whole.
The results have been abysmal.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/la-spending-837000...
> Most of the units are studios or one-bedroom apartments. The audit found 14% of the units build exceeded $700,000 each, and one project in pre-development is estimated to cost almost $837,000 per unit.
So it's one unit that doesn't exist that might cost $837,000, not the average unit. Indeed, the average unit is nowhere near that.
Edit: For comparison, it costs $100k per year to support each prisoner in California's system[1]. Even if the average unit costs $400k (which still seems high), it pays for itself after less than half a decade.
Those $700k units that LA built will also require constant repairs, and the inhabitants will still need food, medical care, counseling, etc.
I wouldn't start by saying that the US prison system takes care of any inmate's needs, even if they spend a fabulously large amount of money seemingly earmarked for that task.
Long term, permanent housing is always going to beat incarceration, when we're talking about the same population. It might cost more at first, but those costs are overwhelmingly fixed and then much smaller future variables. The variables that aren't covered (food, medical care, etc., as you've correctly observed) can often be transferred from carceral programs. Fewer people in prisons also means less money spent on maintaining the physical and human plant; some 20% of the individual costs listed above.
Assuming a $700k unit has an estimated lifespan of 50 years. That's $14k/year, we could say $20k/year with a generous maintenance allowance over the life of the home.
So in this example that's $80k/yr remaining for food, utilities, care, etc.
5 years is indeed aggressive, and probably unrealistic. My goal was to show that even with contrived (and conservative) numbers these programs look great; with longer outlooks, they look fantastic.
Would you like to be committed to a mental institution forever, in that circumstance?
So you get a bucket and put it under the dripping hole. The bucket doesn't fix the roof. The bucket will eventually fill up and you'll have to empty it down a drain before trying it again. Again and again. The bucket isn't solving anything, but would you be better off without the bucket? No, the bucket at least keeps your floor dry some of the time. That's better than nothing. Prison is a bucket. Prisons collect criminals for a while until they eventually fill up. But they're better than dumping all those criminals straight into the streets.
How did caveman society ever survive without a strong police force?
This was highly effective until activists decided that present-day Market Street was something to aspire to.
To shift it the other way, I grew up pretty privileged and never felt the need to steal things and steal them. However, I can easily determine that if I was homeless and poor I absolutely would have. There's no question. You do what you need to do to survive. To look at a 30-year-old guy and be like "what can we do" is missing the timeline by 20 years or whatever. His personality is now deeply invested in a "steal to live" mindset and it will be a constant struggle even if he got arrested and jailed repeatedly.
Wait, I missed one piece of your message, "the money is going to the wrong people" -- it doesn't make a difference. You help people and some people take advantage but society gets a massive net boost all around. You WANT everyone in your society to be doing decently and not driven towards crime.
This is one of the most difficult things to get across with solutions like this. The GP is a prime example of this kind of thinking; it's a refusal to look at systemic problems and apply systemic solutions and only focusing on the individual. The implication that if you gave someone a house they would turn around and stop stealing the next day is mindboggling for everyone. No one (should) advocate for housing as a magic wand to undo 20 years of rot.
Andre's "problem" isn't going to be fixed by anything other than likely expensive therapy and/or apprenticeships. The system has already failed him and it will be very expensive to fix. A cheaper solution is to not create "Andre" in the first place - a homeless 14 year old cannot possibly be expected to get an education or even begin integrating into society.
The homeless people who cause problems are now are, for a lack of a better word, fucked. It would cost tons of money to get these people the rehab, therapy, and education they need to reintegrate into society. It would be politically impossible (and probably financially unfeasible) to implement these changes. A better solution is just not creating these people in the first place. That is what housing first policy tries to achieve.
The vast majority of these people stories are the same - due to systemic poverty issues they weren't able to have stable housing and could not go to school or land a stable job. It was then they started petty crimes like doing drugs/stealing, and once they had a dependency on that lifestyle, they became a regular criminal over 10-15 years. Anyone who tells you they are going to undo 15 years of trauma within the next 3 years is selling you a lie.
What they do after that isn't really relevant to be honest. I'm not trying to polish people into perfect rule following members of society and anyway homeowners get addictions and commit crimes all the time as it is. We don't generally leap to questioning their right to have a place to live though.
If giving homeless people houses solved no other problems it would still be correct and morally necessary.
Remove people from society who steal instead of contribute, give them the opportunity and tools to rejoin productively repeatedly until they can.
The left doesn't seem to have any well formed ideas on actually replacing/reforming the current prison system with something that doesn't have horrible recidivism rates. Obviously there are alternatives but they don't seem politically viable in America. Instead, cities have focused on prosecuting less, which avoids inflicting more cruelty but allows other injustice to persist. At least in the short term, ignoring the problem uses a lot fewer tax dollars than actually implementing solutions.
Maybe not UBI but anti-prohibition for sure would be cheaper
OK, and I grew up the complete opposite and neither did I.
Do you actually believe that the under”privileged” simply can’t help stealing? That the poor are innately thieves? I find this astounding.
The problem is parenting and lack of family values, plain and simple.
So we agree that Andre is blameless and should be given assistance, not punishment. Or is your position more like "obviously this guy's parents didn't love him, why should I?"
The justice system simply needs to play the role his parents never did, disciplining him for his actions and then assisting him in making the right choices when his sentence is complete.
But blameless, no, he is not a child, much as you might like the system to treat him as one.
Either way your statement as it stands is highly disrespectful of the millions who are fully capable of being dirt poor without resorting to theft and other crimes.
>"Andre lives in an apartment"
>So he's not homeless.
Sounds like "homeless" in this context means "can't be a productive member of society to fund his own living", not literal homelessness.
However, you're getting at the truth - "homeless" here is an "emotional baggage" word, and so often conveys that implied image of some poor, struggling, but otherwise "good" people just trying to make it. Except that's largely a solved problem, folks actively trying to end their homelessness will spend an average of three months or less in some sort of "homeless" criteria (on a friends couch, a hotel, a temporary accommodation). The bulk of the issue is folks dropping out of society and causing trouble for their surrounding communities.
Personally, I come from this community. I spent a majority of my middle and high school years bouncing around motels, squats, and friends spare rooms with my father. We were statistically homeless at some level, just not "sleeping rough." My father was and remains that way over a decade later - he cannot and will not be helped other than taking money for his own ends from an occasionally week-willed family member. He works under the table (an otherwise reasonably skilled plumber), pays no tax, bounces around a series of motels in a one-stoplight town along I-95, drinks, drugs, gets DUIs in a series of unregistered junk vehicles. At one point he did a few months for burning down our squat in a drug-bender gone wrong.
There exists a large, and growing subset of the population who have no interest in playing ball, in straightening up and flying right. No amount of "free housing" or "free healthcare" or "free _" is going to solve a cultural rot. When no one cares they will simply abuse the good-natured systems that fail to take into account ill intent.
You're correct, the problem is certainly mosaic and does not fall into a binary "good guy" vs. "bad guy" ... and I'll never understand our nation and its response to long-term mental health facilities that were cesspool levels of bad. Instead of rebuilding them and reforming them, we just did away with them in their entirety. Some strange blend of anti-tax Reaganite and bleeding-heart ACLU-led progressivism combined into creating a hell we all have to suffer, or at least those of us in cities.
I have a soon-to-be FiL with a schizophrenic brother he cares for. The FiL is a man of means, and purchased a home for his brother many years ago in a nice neighborhood. He has family to take him to all appointments, address all of his needs... yet in spite of his absolutely ideal condition he is a menace to his community and would be on the streets were it not for this brotherly love. The standard behaviors, pacing around in the neighborhood muttering to himself, smoking crack, and just general nuisance behaviors. He has accidentally burned down two of his homes through smoking / sleeping in bed but miraculously survived both incidents.
This is a real issue, but a fractional amount, and orthogonal to the issue of the societal drop-outs that are mentally sound, capable of contributing, but choose the path of the drop-out and burn-out. We could solve that problem, we just don't.
In your case, what brought you from the situation you were in before to wherever you are now?
I had one "normal" parent, in the sense of having a home and a stable job, living in a decent community. I was just persona-non-grata in that household by middle school age, as there were some issues with an abusive live-in-boyfriend of my mothers. So I had a stable schooling, and if I needed something like a TI-83 for school I would be furnished it. I wasn't truly destitute, but at the same time had an unstable living arrangement and frequently had to be used as some sort of sympathy bait in the second-hand bread line.
I befriended a student fiddling with a hex editor and a NES ROM in a typing class and that was a bridge into programming for me. Got into a mess of languages and systems (Java, PHP, Javascript, graphic design, etc.) Met some more classmates that were of good means, and of similar interests and so I just sort-of aped their bleeding-edge interests, whether it was PHP, Web 2.0 CSS / jQuery wizardry, or general systems administration.
Following high school, I landed a job out of high school as an intern programmer for $10 / hour on a 1099, getting some number of promotions and raises to $75K full-time with benefits with a little over two years. From there, I'm pretty much just any other programmer.
I told my father if he ever wanted to get his shit together, to reach out and we'd figure it out... but that has never happened. I have some contacts that through their daily lives end up keeping tabs on him, he still scrapes by living his itinerant life.
But he can fund his ability to physically live...in an apartment? Is there another word for a person that "can't be a productive member of society to fund his own living" other than homeless?
Seems like a weird colloquialism to try to adopt.
From the article:
>Andre lives in an apartment thanks to a city-run housing program, but he doesn’t have a job other than selling flipped merchandise.
His apartment is partially funded by the government.
> Is there another word for a person that "can't be a productive member of society to fund his own living" other than homeless?
Not that I know of. Of the ones that come to mind:
"Poor" just implies you can't afford nice things, not necessarily that you can't hold down a job to sustain yourself
"jobless" just implies you currently don't have a job (ie. unemployed), not necessarily that it's a long term thing.
"NEET" is closer, but is more associated with people living in their parent's basements than of the people profiled in the article.
I guess you could use the term "long term jobless" or something, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
"Homeless" in this context really means something like "doesn't live normally" or "can't support themselves the right way".
Actually, the easy homeless cases (people who lack housing but can still work because they are not addicted to drugs/mentally ill/etc...) can already handled fairly effectively by social services. But as you point out, they aren't able to discriminate between them and the harder homeless cases (people who are addicted to drugs/mentally ill/etc...), and treating homeless problems homogeneously means throwing a lot of money away.
That is incorrect. The definition of "home" is not uniformly defined nor equivalent to shelter. Often the homeless are given shelter (with or without restriction, usually the latter) and choose not to utilize it. They are still homeless.
edit: Perhaps clarifying, are you using the term "homeless" to define a _state_ or a _trait_ of the person to whom you're applying it?
If someone has no secure[1] residence[2] that they rely on as their own.
[1] Secure is a relative term, uniquely attributed to individuals
[2] This is necessarily one legal residence, but practically may be a set of locations.
You overlooked this part.
> The problem is the money is going to the wrong people. There are a lot of good and honest people that are homeless and/or struggling to pay their rent. Andre isn't one of them. Andre gets his housing for free while other people freeze and are basically forced to kill themselves. Why is that?
Because American society judges a persons value based on their ability to "work."
Not everyone is capable of working a 9-5. Some people have physical illness, mental illness, disabilities or addictions.
The social and medical support structures in the united states are clearly not adequate, nor successful in helping the vast majority of these people.
Other first world countries don't have these problems. Why is that?
There’s more challenges around the short term disabilities, but pretty much every US state has a low-income / zero-income healthcare program that helps cover those individuals.
And as for overall homeless numbers, the US is pretty much middle of the pack per-capita with a lot of European countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_...
See, you start from the false assumption that all these people lack is a home. Even if you gave them a home 90% (or more) wouldn't be interested.
The problem of homelessness is far more complex and it's not just about money "going to the wrong people" (you mean people motivated to earn it?!?) or a lack of housing.
just give people money so they can decide what they need to be happy, as well pay regular businesses, restaurants, and landlords instead of the poverty industry.
I could not agree more. Not only is it going to the wrong people, it's going to the wrong organizations and government programs that have no real drive to reduce homelessness since that would be self-defeating. What they do is end up spending $60K/tent or $650K/unit on housing the homeless only to have rundown everything within a few years.
Andre is evidence that simply giving people what they need is not enough to stop criminal behavior.
The comment you were replying to wasn’t making any sort of a judgement, what they said was straight up just factually describing the current situation. They weren’t blaming Andre for becoming homeless. They were using him as an illustration that just giving free housing isn’t some magic pill that will solve everything, and the effective solutions need to be more comprehensive than that.
The reality is that people often do make reasonably good decisions from the set of decisions available to them - and that set is often quite bad. Andre's only source of income is selling stolen goods. If he'd stop doing that, wouldn't it be worse for him because he'd have no income? People will say "he should just get a job" but have you tried getting a job? Like, ever? It's far from trivial, especially if you have a criminal record! So, given the choice between A (easy and effective) or B (difficult and probably ineffective) or C (having no money) the best decision is obvious. Choosing A is a good decision. And if we don't want Andre to choose A, we need to give him a better option.
Oftentimes it starts with growing up:
> Andre said he has struggled with homelessness on and off since he was 14. That’s when he started selling at 3rd and Pine. He’s been there almost everyday since. He’s 30 now.
If Andre had a computer at 14 he could be commenting on Hacker News today. Or with other factors he could be an athlete, an artist, an entrepreneur, idk, anything. But he got started on the "petty crime to pay bills" path and that constrained his options from then on.
When we combine this known fact - that his crime begins with not having a stable childhood, which is largely determined by who you have as a parent and how your society treats them - with the attitude that "everything you do is your fault" - we come to the conclusion that it must be Andre's fault that his parents were poor and homeless, which is absurd.
But who is to know what Andre's life would have been like if he had been given what he needed when he was 14? You can't expect someone to spend some of their most formative years on the street and then bounce back just because they suddenly have a roof over their head.
Providing housing certainly is not always sufficient to solve everyone's problems. Plenty of people who've never been homeless commit crimes, develop drug habbits and find other ways to destroy their lives.
Housing is however, necessary, if you want to have any luck helping people. Fixing economic, psychological, substance, or emotional problems becomes many times harder. When people are desperate and are treated liked outcasts regularly, deterring criminal behavior also becomes several times harder.
So yes, housing does not fix everything. It is however a necessary first step in any plan to deal with the homelessness and its comorbidities. Any approach that doesn't start with housing is doomed to fail.
But "end homelessness" was never only about simply providing shelter.
It can be both, and you can cherrypick anecdotes to support whatever narrative you prefer. Alternatively, one can seek data and look for trends in the statistics.
https://www.zillow.com/research/homelessness-rent-affordabil...
Hassle them with repeated arrests and releases? When has this approach ever worked?
Put them in prison and make them an expensive, institutionalized ward of the state? I don't want that on my taxes.
I know you don't like this interviewee's attitude, but think about it for a second. This is a man who has spent most of his life flipping small-dollar goods outside on a street corner and being looked down on by many. This is not a life most people would envy. I don't condone petty theft, but I don't think Seattle would benefit from this person losing their housing or being prosecuted either.
Andre doesn't represent all homeless people; I'm aware of that. But I think he represents a much larger population than people would like to believe.
It's called "According to Need"
You might say that putting Andre in prison is worth it, because it would discourage him from stealing in the future. Looking at the research around the topic, the US Sentencing Commission found that there is no statistically significant deterrent effect from sentences under 5 years [2]. Other studies have found no deterrent effect from any length of sentencing [3]. So now we're looking at a minimum 5 year sentence for an uncertain positive effect.
If prison were a drug or a program that cost $3,400/mo and had to be taken for 5 years for an effect that may not even be real, we would call it a scam.
I'm not saying Andre is in the right. I'm saying the carceral way of dealing with poor people who commit petty crimes is expensive and ineffective (maybe even more so than giving someone a free apartment and letting him loiter on the street corner), and we need to consider a different way forward.
[1] https://www.doc.wa.gov/docs/publications/reports/200-AR001.p...
[2] https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...
[3] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/003288551141522...
He and his ilk do much more damage to the city than that, when they're allowed to continue their criminal lifestyles.
https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/the-roots-of-the-crisis
http://archive.kuow.org/post/tenants-risk-homelessness-were-...
I strongly doubt it was the article from the Stranger's blog that completely turned around honkdaddy's thinking on this subject.
I think the viewpoint I find frustrating is that if we could "just" solve the housing affordability issue, that everything else would fall into place. There are places with very affordable housing with lots of homeless people. There are places with very expensive housing and almost no homeless people. The issue is multi-faceted and complex, but I personally think it's better to start by looking at the social factors than it is the strict economics.
This is not a viewpoint that I've ever heard earnestly expressed by anyone involved in homelessness/housing policy.
Housing is something we should provide for two reasons: because it is the humane thing to do, and because it lowers the ceiling for other restorative/rehabilitative efforts. It can't on it's own solve every social ill that comes with homelessness or privation, and it isn't intended to.
So that’s why I believe people focus on housing a lot.
Of course the other aspects (mental health and drug use) are extremely important as well. Because someone who is mentally unwell might not want to live in that cheap apartment. But how do you solve that problem? If we have a group of people who can’t or don’t rely on a family support system (which was probably more common 50-100 years ago), we need to create a support system for them. And that is extremely challenging to do compared to “change the zoning laws” or “pay a developer to build a new building.”
So I think it makes sense that people fixate on housing, even if the other parts of it are also very impactful. (But again, how do you solve the social factors if someone doesn’t even have somewhere to live?)
Yes, for some people it's too late for "just" a free place to live to solve their problems. But I think it will absolutely make a difference for people on the brink, families, and future generations.
No one is going to solve homelessness in a generation. The damage it does to people is so significant. But we should work to assure that people like Andre never exist to begin with.
You say that delis should hire them. Do you expect delis to hire homeless people? Who can't shower? Who have no address? A home is a critical step to getting hired. It doesn't mean you'll suddenly get a job and be productive, but without it you're absolutely fucked.
Yes, we should give everyone housing. We should also pay them to go to school, give them free health care, etc, so that they have the opportunity to actually move forward.
There are also countless places in this city you can get clean for either free or a couple dollars [1]. As I mentioned in my post, there are quite literally thousands of restaurants, warehouses, cleanup crews in the city you can work under the table for if you show up sober and willing to work. I say this because I personally know individuals that do this. Don't believe me? Go to /r/homeless and look up cash jobs. Thousands of other people have figured it out, why can't Andre?
I'm all for societal change which ensures that individuals like Andre don't end up in that situation in the first place, but I'm of the opinion those changes start in the classroom and with ones parents, not by the state giving away free apartments. The fact of the matter is that if Andre's already been stealing from Target's and selling the goods on the sidewalk for fifteen years, maybe he doesn't want a minimum wage job in the first place?
I don't doubt that a free place to live would help Andre, I mean hell, not having to pay rent would help me as well. But surely there's a better strategy than housing life-long criminals for free, indefinitely?
There's a program in New York called ACE [2] which guides homeless people from the street to a job to eventually subsidized rent or a temporary free place to live. Every year they move a couple thousand individuals out of poverty. It's worth watching some of their success stories. All it will do is resonate the point I've been making this entire time - homelessness is an incredibly complex problem and the strategy of 'free houses for anyone who asks' is misguided, expensive, and ultimately fruitless. I don't doubt it works for some, but for others, it's at best an incredibly expensive band-aid, and at worst a point of enablement of their already destructive behaviour.
I've seen it remarked before on this site that the real solution to the Fermi Paradox is that every other intelligent civilization in the universe is forever held back because of its need to provide for its members that have collectively decided they no longer feel like contributing. In the words of Ned Flanders, "taxes pay for trees, sunshine, policemen, and the folks who just don't feel like working - god bless 'em!"
[1] https://www.dare2bnyc.org/showers [2] https://acenewyork.org/
To be fair, I doubt any corner store would hire him. Any real job is probably more lucrative than peddling stolen goods off the street, so there's likely a good reason for why he doesn't have another option (e.g. mental health or substance abuse).
If you owned a deli or corner-store would you be willing to hire someone with criminal record?
Would you be willing to hire someone who doesn't have a home?
Keep in mind that not having a home means they probably have no way to consistently keep themselves clean. And what do they put on the employment application for their address? And how good of an employee is someone going to be when they don't know where they're going to sleep at night?
When people's socioeconomic situation is so incredibly messed up and they know the system doesn't care about them, they'll do whatever they have to to survive. The cracks in the system have always been pushed to the fringes of society where the middle and upper class didn't have to pay attention to them, but now the cracks are visible downtown.
But then Andre would need to work for somebody else and with somebody else, on somebody else's own schedule.
If you're amoral and see having a criminal record as a cost of doing business, then selling stolen merchandise on a street corner lets you be your own boss on your own schedule, which, as we on HN know, lots of people are willing to give up a third to half of their paycheck to achieve.
Recidivism itself is seen as a factor during sentencing, which means that even for the same isolated criminal act the same perpetrator gets longer and longer sentences.
All evidence to the contrary. SF, Seattle, LA… seems like the free housing people are indeed immune to at least petty crime laws.
The Yonkers man who brutally beat a 67yo Asian woman [1] had already been arrested 14 times. Only now, after they beat a harmless elder half to death for no reason, will they see any level of punishment.
[1] https://pix11.com/news/local-news/northern-suburbs/yonkers-m...
I don’t want people to go to prison, that should be what happens as a sort of last resort. People should have plenty of options before you get there, but yeah there’s always gonna be some number of dickheads that are better just kept away from the rest of society.
Creating affordable low income housing makes the city better for everyone and it's a necessary first step towards solving the sort of problems Andre has.
Workers who are undocumented actually make up almost 5% of America's workforce - cash pay workers are probably an even higher percent.
It's an almost comically bourgeoisie myth that one needs an SSN and job history to get paid in America. Go to any Home Depot outside the city around 6am and ask any of the hard-working, skilled, day labourers making $100/day to support a family of five if they think the government of Seattle should be happily giving out free apartments to life-long criminals.
This is a strawman - expect the strawman here is Andre. When, during the course of this interview, did Andre become a city planner? Why are you taking his suggestion so literally?
You have successfully quoted the problem ("he has struggled with homelessness on and off since he was 14"), but then refuse to actually address it. Someone who has been homeless since 14 is not going to magically become better without significant resources expended. Someone who has been homeless since 14 is probably someone who is very difficult to reintegrate into society and likely has problems holding down an actual job. The "solution" for Andre is likely therapy and education, the latter which he missed during his developmental years. To try and fix issues like these is very expensive and can only be done on a case by case basis.
The people who believe "homelessness is an issue that can be solved by throwing free housing at people" are looking to avoid creating these types of individuals instead of "fixing" them post-hoc. You aren't going to fix a problem exacerbated over 20 years by a policy change in 2.
I don't blame those who live there (or in any cities like SF), as I personally don't believe the problem was caused by Amazon or any other tech company; I understand the frustration of dealing with people who think homelessness was personally caused by Jeff Bezos. Both are just side effects of policy changes and tech advancements that happened decades ago; and in the same vein I think solutions to homeless must consider approaches on the same time scale.
Whether they like to admit it or not, the thing that is appealing to most people about authoritarianism is the aesthetics (look at the meme of Singapore and gum, something that is reflective of a decades-long policy of corporal punishment for minor antisocial behaviors). Homelessness is related to this, because authoritarian governments are happy spend resources to jail the homeless (or otherwise hide their existence).
Whether or not they realize it, the US used to be a lot more authoritarian about streetscape attractiveness (at least in areas where the wealthy would congregate) - tents would be taken immediately by police, people would sit in jail for camping, etc. Then COVID caused a one-time burst in anti-authoritarian compassion, but now people are grappling with how much of that should become permanent vs. temporary (if you think the WFH debate is hot, ask a local unhoused person about a return to group shelters vs. relaxed camping laws).
The trend you're identifying is that people conflate the broad problem of streetscape attractiveness with one of its causes (also a broad problem). We as a society can solve homelessness, but that does not mean that streetscapes will immediately become attractive.
My bet is that a lot of streetscape attractiveness laws get passed/enforced now that the trauma-induced compassion of the pandemic is fading (because as you so rightfully point out, people like clean safe streets), and my hope is that improved housing policy coincides with that to limit the impact on society's most vulnerable.
It sounds like Andre's problem isn't homelessness (he's housed, per the article), but that he's a petty thief with no other real prospects or skills. Those aren't problems that housing can solve, but housing does eliminate some of the barriers in the way of those problems (such as Andre being robbed while sleeping on the street).
> Why would we be humane to someone who fundamentally doesn't respect others' rights?
This is a deeply dispiriting and reactionary way to look at the world. You do it because humane treatment is an end in itself, not a reward we give people for being “good.” It’s not earned, it’s due.
Edit: And, to be absolutely clear: there’s no world in which pointlessly punishing Andre gets what you what you want. Giving caffeine to a drunk doesn’t make them less drunk; it turns them into a wide awake drunk. Punishing someone with homelessness and exposure doesn’t make them into less of a petty criminal; it turns them into a more desperate and jaded one.
Also "humane treatment is an end in itself, not a reward we give people for being “good.” It’s not earned, it’s due." this is a deeply naive and childish view of the world. The humane treatment is not "earned", yes - it's the default. But it can be "unearned" - if someone doesn't give others the "humane" treatment, they don't deserve one either. Social contract, sorta.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint: because it's good for general morale.
The first is the high degree of mental illness & civilian harassment per capita. In my experience, Seattle's homeless come across as particularly scary in their audaciousness and willfulness to commit minor crimes. Part of it may have to do with the car centric design of Seattle, which does not give you the NYC-esque safety in numbers. Whether it be 2 am in an empty-ish subway or a park with a lot of homeless people taking shelter, I have never been harassed in NYC. On the contrary, I seem to get confronted by a homeless person rather often when I walk through Seattle's most affected areas. FWIW, my intuition is that drug abuse is much more rampant among Seattle's homeless communities.
The most confusing thing about Seattle's homelessness, is that it coincides with the high foot-traffic touristy areas. In most other cities (Boston, NYC, DC); popular walkways, green spaces and core touristy areas tend to be policed and kept clear of homelessness. The problem persists, but doesn't directly interfere with your average civilian's life as much. In contrast, Seattle's most scenic and pedestrian-dense parts are more affected by this problem. Walking from one end of downtown (Pioneer Square) to the adjacent party neighborhood (Capitol Hill) is practically a walking tour of the city's homelessness crisis. I know a few people who do not leave their houses in downtown/pioneer square without a car.
I want to blame the last decade's incompetent city leadership. But then again, it is the people of Seattle who are voting for them.
When I first visited Paris I was shocked at how different the homeless people were. They were actively going around targeting people and trying all kinds of tricks to get you to give them money. This was in the major touristy areas too. I can't say I ever felt unsafe, but I certainly felt less inclined to spend time outside (and I was wearing a money belt at all times, nothing valuable in my pockets).
With homeless here (at least in Portland and Seattle) it really depends. Most completely ignore you, some ask for money, some will be very loud and aggressive at no one in particular possibly from hallucinations or just being upset in general.
A small but significant percentage will act extremely unhinged, so much so they make me nervous as a larger guy with military experience. I've heard that a lot of this is due to a new kind of meth on the streets that causes terrible psychosis.
I’m no anti-drug warrior, but it’s hard to ignore that the availability of this drug leads some people to become incapable of functioning as part of a society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Z_BIjfrfc
> I’m no anti-drug warrior, but it’s hard to ignore that the availability of this drug leads some people to become incapable of functioning as part of a society.
what does this mean? if you mean that let's shoot on sight everyone who touched meth, then ... sure, that could solve this problem, but you really have to be merciless. I mean despite the current US War on Drugs ... drugs are winning (big time! https://torontolife.com/city/this-man-is-the-jeff-bezos-of-t... )
also it's hard to ignore how other countries went the opposite way and achieved better results.
Still I'm sure Amazon will take any excuse it can get to reduce headcount in Seattle given the city council's feelings towards them. They've been shifting to Bellevue for a few years now, and most hiring in Seattle proper has slowed or stopped due to headcount caps.
It's mainly the tourist part between king street station and pike place. And pretty much outside of 2nd and 3rd, you don't see it. It doesn't represent 99.99% of seattle and yet people here make it seem like all of seattle is overrun with homelessness.
But no, 99.9% of Seattle does not look like the block bounded by 2nd, 3rd, Pike, and Pine. Or like Pioneer square.
I want my children to be trusting (I expect them to be scammed some number of times and survive the experience) so it does make me consider where I want to live where they can experience independence, other children, and end up secure people.
It is not the vast majority of Seattle by land area or population. There's a lot elsewhere to do and see in Seattle that doesn't involve this area. Most of the other troubled areas are considerably safer than this specific location. I live in another troubled area. I'm not thrilled about it, but it is an order of magnitude better than 3rd and Pike.
Anyway, I'd suggest not being in fear of taking the family to Seattle.
"Hey, guys, we're going to Seattle! What would you like to see?"
"Let's go to Pike Place, I've heard a lot about that!"
"Ehh...okay, but we'll have to stick to the inside of the market. Don't wander out, it's not safe!"
"We could go to Pioneer Square!"
"Holy crap, no way! It's scary down there."
"The art museum...?"
"Maybe, first thing in the morning, before things start getting...weird..."
"We could, er, have lunch in the historic International District?"
"Uhm...you're comfortable wielding a knife, right?"
"What about, uhh...the arboretum?"
"The arboretum! What a great idea! We'll go to the Arboretum. See, I told you Seattle is a great place to visit."
Point being: about 90% of the stuff tourists come to see in Seattle is within that hot spot. And it is bigger than 9 square blocks, though it's still only a small part of the city, much less the municipal area.
The previous comment is very misleading. I walk around this area all the time. It really mostly is 3rd between Stewart and Pike. I’ve been mostly avoiding that area for some time now. Everything else is normal big city stuff.
PS: My girlfriend is from NYC and she’s amused about most of the stuff people freak out about here. I wonder if maybe people aren’t used to big city stuff here.
I just wanted to say, when I was a kid I saw a lot of homelessness and I think it helped foster some sense of humanity. One thing I still think about from time to time. I saw a kid, around the same age as me at the time, with no hands begging for money. I distinctly remember this feeling of "that could very easily be me, just a few variables different".
I guess the reason I'm saying this is as a parent, I don't wont to hide this from my kid. And this is not to say that I think your comment was to hide this from your kids. This is just what I thought about after reading it. It just gave me a lot to think about and I am not sure of a way to safely do this but I think its important. This is the system we actively participate in and endorse in one way or another. I don't want my kid to look away at the ugly parts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
Is it possible that these other cities also have violence, but it is just happening out of sight, creating a general feeling of ‘this is a safe city’ for visitors?
San Francisco has a lot of poor people, i.e. homeless, and a lot of which have either mental health issues or substance abuse issues. That doesn't necessarily make them dangerous, but the more people like that you see on your walk to work, the more it can contribute to someone's general feelings of being unsafe.
Vancouvers East Hastings and LAs public transit system (Blue line at night) are both examples of poor people who are (mostly) not dangerous. You could navigate these areas with very little chance of being assaulted but I doubt many would opt for such a route if given other options. There are areas though which are both poor and dangerous, certain parts of Detroit comes to mind
If a homeless person pushes you or spits at you, what are you realistically going to do? Call the police, wait 15-30 minutes for them to show up, and hope they can find a guy who's long gone? And even when they do bother to catch the person, the prosecutors in Seattle have a track record of dropping misdemeanor cases. It just seems like a waste of time, so you end up writing it off as an unlucky experience and moving on with your day.
Other cities may be more violent on paper, but perhaps that's because they have smaller homeless populations and their crimes are perpetrated by people who can be reliably located and prosecuted.
BS. I have caught the criminals that broke into my house and stole over 15k in computers and cameras, and that they had a crime ring, storage units, etc. Cop response, "we can't get warrants on the weekend". I filed a complaint to the city, got a call from the union, telling me I can't file a complaint against officer friendly because he is about to retire in a month.
This is one incident, I have more. Same goes for the Portland police. They don't do their jobs, even when they are done for them. In Portland, I also caught the guy that broke in my car. The detective that was assigned my case, "don't do my job!" and then he just dropped it. Name and address of perp and a witness that would testify.
A couple months ago I was talking to an off duty cop that was doing traffic for a construction site on Capitol Hill, she thought I was out canvasing to recall Sawant. She said her attitude and the attitude of Seattle cops is that the liberals in Seattle can drown in their own shit, she is moving out of the state because she doesn't feel respected. Good riddance!
The situation on 3rd Ave is bad, but Amazon also wants to show the city council that raising taxes on them would result in them loosing an employer, not getting any revenue.
Maybe Amazon can deal with people fighting against capitalism and the very idea of ownership, but levying taxes to fund a nogo zone (where people get shot), is not a project that Amazon wants to fund?
And I'm further speculating that a lot of this sentiment in Seattle, SF and NYC is driven by the influx of affluent office workers who moved in during the lowest ebb of crime in the 2010s and are getting a rude awakening of what city life is like. Anyone who sees this as some sort of end times doesn't remember the 90s.
Not saying you're wrong but there is an issue here as well.
Summary:
>> The testimony revealed business desperation, but don’t expect help from Seattle’s politicians. In response to a business owner’s question about how to address gun violence, City Council President Debora Juarez said, “I don’t have an answer for you” about “what’s going to happen to stop people from getting a gun and coming into your store.”
>> She admitted that black Seattle residents want some assurance of safety. But she added that “to be frank with you, I don’t also believe that hiring way more police or addressing every issue with a gun and a badge works either. Because we know who gets affected the worst. It’s people of color. They get killed.”
>> In other words, as criminals terrorize Seattle, its leaders still think police are the problem. The lawlessness will persist until Seattle voters stage a revolt.
Seattle PD is the problem in a lot of ways. We've made one simple ask of them: stop arbitrarily shooting people. They have failed in that task, and every time we, the voters, try to hold them accountable, we are told that "the Mayor doesn't supervise the police department" or "Office of Police Accountability has no authority" or "the consent decree prohibits us from passing that ordinance."
CM Juarez, who is a person of color I might add, is correct that the actual statistics say that being a person of darker colored skin around a Seattle PD officer is a risky endeavor. So adding more badges and guns to the street won't do much.
https://harrell.seattle.gov/2022/02/15/mayor-bruce-harrell-s...
>> My administration is reaching out to members of the criminal defense bar, many of whom are my friends, to let them know that when we make arrests, we will make sure constitutional rights are protected; alternative forms other than arrest are explored; treatment plans are in place and that a militarized or racialized approach will not be tolerated.
>> Part of that plan requires more officers. The depleted staffing we see today does not allow us to react to emergencies and crime with the response times our residents deserve. It does not allow us to staff the specialty teams we need for issues like domestic violence or DUI or financial crimes targeting the elderly. It does not allow us to conduct the thorough investigations we expect to make sustainable change.
I always thought i-940 was good policy to help address police issues, but it seems stalled / falling short?
https://www.seattle.gov/community-police-commission/give-com...
>> We witnessed this system fail last year. After 60 percent of Washington voters approved Initiative 940 requiring independent investigations of police killings, the rules for how independent investigations would work were ultimately decided by the WSCJTC. What they approved did not meet community expectations. That is one of the reasons why that issue has still not been settled, and the Governor has had to create yet another commission to advise him how to properly implement independent investigations.
I really like the Peelian Principles [1], I wish that sort of thinking was also part of the conversation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles#The_nine_pr...
These are still tragedies, certainly. The police should not cause any innocent to fear for their life. But compare these numbers with the homicide rate in Seattle alone [3]. There were as many murders per year there as there as total unjustified police killings in the entire country. Much of which, historically, has been black-on-black violence. It is in the top 90th percentile for crime in the USA. Those numbers actually climbed to 53 and 40 in 2020 and 2021 respectively according to the report in the GP's article!
I am reminded of the polls going around, when Defund the Police was in full swing, that indicated that most people - even black people in high-crime areas who were most likely, statistically, to be shot - actually wanted greater police presence, not less. Because the issue with many high-crime areas is that when the police leave, violent crimes go up, not down. For illumination [4]: "In the end, the homicide rate in the CHAZ turned out to be 1,216 per 100,000—nearly 50 times greater than Chicago’s." Every victim there, let's not forget, was black.
edit: removed a duplication in sources.
[0]: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police...
[2]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fac...
[3]: https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Seattle-Washington.htm...
it even had a twitter account for a while. https://twitter.com/3rdandpike?lang=en
Walking from downtown to Amazon's campus is wild, feels like the corporation owns that entire part of town.
Seattle city council made deep cuts (but stopped short of totally "defunding the police") to the police there and ... shockingly ... crime has gone way up since then. The vote was 8-1 https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/washington/articles/...
[0]: http://www.seattle.gov/police/information-and-data/crime-das...
Reporting crime to the police is usually just an additional burden on the victim/reporter, often when they need it least.
At best, a police report might make filing an insurance claim easier if property was damaged. Otherwise, it's just not worth it for most people to file a report that basically gets ignored.
I live in Seattle now and wouldn’t bother reporting it because I know it wouldn’t be prioritized for a response.
According to the chief in November, 2021 there were 1,015 deployable officers[0]. As of today, there are 1,325[1].
[0]: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-pol...
[1]: https://www.seattle.gov/police/about-us/about-the-department...
https://www.yelp.com/biz/mcdonalds-seattle-27?hrid=wXm1o4rv1...
There was also a twitter page for a while:
I worked at 3rd and Pine McDonalds in 1994 just before I got into the UW CS department. It was notorious even back then, I assume before 94 as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o78v8EE7Ano
3rd and Pike has a chipotles (that obviously wasn't there in the 90s). Pike is also much worse than Pine in terms of its unhoused problem (they hangout more at the Target, Pike Place Market area, 3rd and Pine is a bit of an outlier).
Amazon shuts small Seattle office after spate of crimes in area - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30635654 - March 2022 (115 comments)
3rd and Pike/Pine has been a bad location for this entire time. I am given to understand that it's been bad since, idk, the 80s? When Covid hit, the visible homelessness situation exploded. I can't speak to all the factors as to why, but it was unbelievable. Normally 3rd and Pike/Pine were mitigated by the normals wandering through. That all vanished. It was rough.
In the last few months, it seems that there's been a shooting in Seattle daily. Many do not seem to be directly connected with traditional gang-gang violence over drugs/turf wars, or the long-standing tradition of arguing with armed drunks after the bar closes.
I can't speak in nuance to homelessness relationships to violence, but I can clearly note that there seems to be a relation.
> Last month The Wall Street Journal editorial board declared that “lawlessness now hampers Seattle’s economic recovery.”
I would not rent or buy any office space in Downtown Seattle until the City addresses the violence; addressing that at a deep enough level, the homelessness situation - nonprofit services, camps, etc. that are all downtown will need to be relocated. That is almost certainly politically untenable here.
What the WSJ might be missing is that there's very little reason for knowledge workers to show up to an office daily to stare at their computer. So cities like Seattle, which have spent 20 years investing into knowledge work companies, are going to take that hit to the face, hard. I'm personally talking with my wife about finding a city with more sun and cheaper houses...
There is a clear problem with homelessness here, and that's very evident downtown. When you get to the more residential area it feels like a normal city. It feels more uncomfortable than it does unsafe.
1) bad stuff definitely exists
3rd/Pine, parts of SoDo, the couple blocks between Occidental Square and Kobe Terrace, Aurora between like 85th and 145th, and bits of Beacon/Columbian/Rainier, are all what I'd call legitimately unsettling/dangerous experiences for WASPs and I totally understand why places downtown are having issues.
2) bad stuff isn't new
I got mugged multiple times on free-ride-zone buses as a kid/teen, lost lots of bikes, etc etc. The police have always been worse than useless and nobody I knew, even upper-middle-class neighborhood-dwellers, bothered reporting petty property crime. The impact of homelessness on downtown quality of life has pretty much always been a thing; consider https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/warning-seattles-f... (from 2012) - the free-zone buses were literal mobile drug dens after a certain hour or on certain routes, was pretty nuts.
Before the viaduct was torn down, it was effectively a miles-long open-air shelter. I actually wonder how much of the current tensions are attributable to having physically gotten rid of one of the more inherently accommodating structures in the area, driving that population more out into the open a few blocks uphill.
3) bad stuff is getting worse
No argument that things haven't accelerated throughout the pandemic, though. Having actually spent a lot of time wandering around outside in the international district in early 2020, I can say that the current trajectory absolutely didn't start around/after the summer unrest. Imo, that's a totally unjustified attempt at ideologically linking unrelated concepts. As mentioned, cops have been useless since forever. The pandemic and pandemic-related restrictions have engendered an enormous amount of economic instability that bureaucratic-focused measures like rent assistance and eviction moratoria often fail to meaningfully mitigate; those most in need of help are the ones who aren't getting it. I think the destabilizing economic impact of the pandemic on the populations most vulnerable to homelessness is systematically discounted by the smug suburbanites who really really really want to find a cause, any cause, that isn't rooted in housing/inequality issues. Much easier to blame defunding the police.
4) rate of increase appears proportional to amount of socioeconomic deprivation
My take is that the amount of badness tracks pretty closely with aggregate economic fucked-ness. I did a lot of volunteering at the Compass Center circa the 2008 economic crisis and saw the progression firsthand: expensive housing begets housing instability, which is often the first step on a long downwards slide towards being a naked screaming shit-flinger. One gets driven into an encampment and now one's proximate to drug sales and has a lot of free time - doesn't take the most detailed analysis of all time to see how things continue to slide. People talk about multiple "classes" of homeless - the real honest Americans temporarily down on their luck, vs. the insane drug addicts accosting randoms on the street. While those distinctions do exist, it's often ignored that the boundaries between them are pretty fragile and it is very easy to progress downhill; the actual crazies come from somewhere, and that somewhere is unfortunately frequently the cauldron of fucked-ness that is living without stable housing.
All this said, I live my daily life without worrying about it much or even encountering examples of visible homelessness. The region is increasingly segregated on the basis of economic class, so for your Amazon dev working from home in Magnolia or whatever the issue is largely academic.
I will absolutely back that up 100%.
The 2020 summer unrest imo is first-order irrelevant to the homelessness/crime question, although policing practices/headcount might influence certain things somewhat.
I have lived in the city since 1995 and this has always been true.
Six months ago, I watched 7 cops in 3 suvs unable to find and detain a drunk guy that went from unconscious to walking away with his baseball cap pulled down. It literally looked like a Loony Tunes episode.
As far as I am concerned, they are all LARPing.
https://www.seattle.gov/city-budget/2019-20-proposed-budget/...
We did not encounter any direct criminality against us while we lived there, although my wife had a close call. She stayed late to finish up work and left her internal office door unlocked to grab food. Within that 15 minute window, someone hopped a fencing structure, gained entry to the building, and managed to steal anything he thought was important. It was one of the few offices unlocked. Thankfully she did not surprise him in the act.
Camera recordings provided a clear description of the perpetrator and police found him within 20 minutes at a local homeless encampment. A 19-year-old kid high on meth with a long criminal history including rape. Police recovered everything and returned it after holding it as evidence. It's an incredibly sad situation all around.
Is it that complicated and costly compared to this shame? USA people are so strange.
- Anatole France
Please, remember that actual people live here and not just bits displayed on a screen. Also remember that these are incredibly complex problems and that any solution you type into this text box is not going to be easy to implement, easy to track, or easy to push to resolution. Life is not a set of Jira tickets.
I have lived inside the city limits of Seattle virtually my entire life. Except for a brief stint in Texas for work, Seattle has been home. Seattle, like all cities, has its warts and problems. The absolutely staggering level of income and wealth inequality we have experienced in the last decade has taken all of those problems and multiplied them tenfold.
Seattle is a beautiful city with a lot to offer...which is why tens of thousands of people move here every year.
Should there be crime on 3rd Ave? No. Should there be crime anywhere? No. But, finally, please remember that agendas exist and are being pushed and, bluntly, Amazon has a lot of arrows in its quiver if it wants to make a proper good influence on our shared hometown. Odd that it so rarely uses those arrows, except for press releases.
This is the key, to me. Amazon moving out because of crime seems like some kind of full-circle irony, when they have contributed so much to that inequality in the first place.
I grew up in Seattle, and live here now. Crime and homelessness has been an issue for a decade or so, and it's become a much bigger issue (more spread out than it was) since COVID. None of that indicates getting "tougher" on crime/homelessness as a solution to our problems. Not to me, anyway.
The greatest irony of all is that municipalities continue to fall for this trick. American corporations have been doing it for nearly a century now, and Amazon is only the latest to pick up the proud tradition.
Amazon has 16 high rise buildings under construction in Bellevue. Facebook has a massive campus in Bellevue. Microsoft is on the edge of Bellevue. Google's Kirkland campus is up the road 2.2 miles north from Bellevue. Tons of tech companies of all size there. Amazing downtown.
People subscribe and watch how many fall dead, because this twitter account shows the murders. See in real time. https://twitter.com/HomicideSeattle
And most homeless don't regularly get arrested for violent crimes, but it's incredibly telling that you immediately turn the conversation to the most problematic minority, and ignore how your suburb shits on the other 90% of them. Just because you're homeless doesn't make you a violent criminal. (Just like how if you're from the Eastside doesn't immediately make you a lot of other unsavory things.)
There are ~11,000 homeless people in King County. Most of them aren't violent criminals. How many does Bellevue house? Your fair share is ~700, are you meeting it? Seattle's fair share is ~3,400 - or it would be, if you weren't shirking yours.
Considering the City of Seattle lacks the legal authority to prosecute "violent crimes" (anything beyond a simple misdemeanor is handled by the King County Prosecutor) and the jail is operated by the county, please explain how it is that "Seattle" releases them within three hours?
To make sure I'm being perfectly clear here though: to each their own! I prefer Seattle, but totally get why someone might prefer Bellevue too.
This is, of course, a positive feedback loop.
When normal people have zero reason to be in an area, criminals get emboldened, and normal people have even fewer incentives to go there.
They choose how they want to spend their time, and the choice they have largely made is 'we don't respond to much of anything, but when we do, we try to make our response far more violent and/or racist than it has to be.'
The SPD didn't get put under a decade-long federal injunction because it was good at doing its job.
West coast states are also subject to a court ruling not allowing them to simply ban sleeping on sidewalks:
followed ironically by:
> bluntly, Amazon has a lot of arrows in its quiver if it wants to make a proper good influence on our shared hometown. Odd that it so rarely uses those arrows, except for press releases.
and now to the meat.
> remember that actual people live here and not just bits displayed on a screen. Also remember that these are incredibly complex problems and that any solution you type into this text box is not going to be easy to implement, easy to track, or easy to push to resolution.
The same is true for every story posted here. Please stop trying to deflate the failures of Seattle politicians and activists by attempting to humanise the story past a reasonable point.
Repeated apologism doesn't improve things for anyone.
People blaming this on all their favorite pre-existing issues (racism, evil police, inequality, etc.) means the issues will not be fixed and things will get worse before they get better. Seattleites as a people just aren't serious enough to fix the issues.
It took Seattle a few decades to make downtown a welcoming and safe place again after the bad ol' days. And then we undid it in 24 months. It's madness.
But this is a problem that has perpetually growing in Seattle. There were growing tent cities in the area long before "defund the police". If you went to Seattle in the 90s you would see many of these same issues. Yes things are getting worse now, but so are the income related issues as well.
The idea that this is primarily driven by something happening in recent years is a bit ridiculous.
"Our prosecutors" is not the City of Seattle. The Seattle city attorney does not have the authority to prosecute anything above simple misdemeanors. It's up to the county who gets prosecuted and who doesn't, and King County has said that county policy is that you can't arrest people into better conditions.
> safe place again after the bad ol' days. And then we undid it in 24 months
Pardon? Are you really saying that downtown is less safe and less inviting than downtown in the 80s and 90s? You are aware that the waterfront largely did not exist back then, that violent crime in 98101 was almost six times its current amount back then? That the number of people living in downtown has rebounded from its COVID-induced trough and is now 4% higher than before?
I have lived through those "bad ol' days" and also the "good times" you mentioned and to say that downtown is undone and worse now than it was before, to quote an esteemed colleague, "is madness."
There has never been any correlation between police expenditure and crime. If there was, NYC would be the safest city in the US.
Sane, good people who cannot afford to be in $WestCoastCity do not move into a tent and acquire meth habits. They move away, somewhere they can afford. I know, I’ve lived with these people, I’ve been these people. Sane-but-not-well-off people leaving is probably harmful for $WestCoastCity's culture and economy, but it is not where the blight comes from.
It’s drugs (see: San Fransicko) and crime-tolerant laws & attitudes.
It's interesting seeing the same revivalist trend in public policy, particularly with respect to law enforcement and drug policies.
Like those musicians, I can only surmise that younger generations think, for whatever reason, that they can do it better this time.
Tell me how COVID ruined our citizens' moral fiber. Tell me how COVID made us soft on crime. Tell me how COVID suddenly tripled our population of mentally ill.
If we'd actually defunded the police, instead of saying we wanted to and then not, maybe there would be some money to care for people who are obviously incapable of caring for themselves. If we taxed our local corporations at all, maybe there would be some money for that.
Yes, there are plenty of people on drugs. You can put them in jail, and see where that gets you. Or you can treat addiction like the public health crisis it is. Fund the goddamn services, with tax money from Amazon.
An increase in inequality does not necessarily mean an increase in absolute poverty (it means an increase in relative poverty); indeed, an increase in inequality may very well go hand-in-hand with a decrease in absolute poverty.
An increase in inequality does not justify, or explain, an increase in crime: folks might very well be better off in absolute terms after inequality increases.
There is something other than inequality alone which explains the problems in Seattle.
Agreed, but... sometimes inequality and poverty do happen at the same time. Definitely not always, but is it actually the case in Seattle that there has been a decrease in absolute poverty? Would you say that inequality has skyrocketed in Seattle but the absolute purchasing power for people on things like housing, food, etc, has been unaffected?
I am pretty skeptical.
> folks might very well be better off in absolute terms after inequality increases.
"Might be" is doing a lot of work here. You're right, they might be, but they might also not be. Last I checked Seattle has some of the most expensive housing in the country, and last time I visited I remember prices basically being through the roof on a ton of goods and services. Maybe things have gotten better since then? But I'm not sure I buy that everyone in Seattle is better off but a small portion of the population has gotten very rich so it's just relative inequality that's increased -- it seems to me from the outside looking in that the rising tide has not only not raised all boats in the area, it has in fact gone over some people's heads who were unable to swim with it.
Which is definitely not to say that poverty is the only problem that Seattle has, but I'd be very surprised to see numbers that indicate living in Seattle has gotten more affordable over time[0]. I agree that rising inequality does not necessarily mean rising poverty, but I would love to see some numbers saying that Seattle in specific does not have a rising poverty problem, my prior is that it probably does.
----
[0]: Of course, feel free to surprise me if those numbers exist, I haven't checked them so I might very well be wrong, it's dangerous for me to trust my intuition too much on these things.
Talking about inequality is talking about an irrelevant thing.
Judging by the replies you've received, I'm guessing this didn't work out the way you were hoping...
Though, on the bright side, it did introduce me to the epithet "San Fransicko" which, while not particularly clever, is very mildly amusing.
I apologize for my curtness, but I don't buy this.
Seattle's lack of homes has to do with NIMBYs blocking upzoning efforts. The city is mostly R1 zoned, and most homeowners have been here for more than a decade. The new 'rich' transplants are mostly renting in what is a massive wealth transfer to historic homeowners in the Seattle area.
The worst of Seattle's problems also coincide strongly with the leadership being elected into office. HN-users frequently complain about terrible policies in middle-American cities and states. Some times, a complaint is a complaint. A pseudo anonymous forum should not require its participants to sugarcoat their feelings about living in a city.
> incredibly complex problems
I agree there. But, there is low hanging fruit that the city can start with.
> Seattle is a beautiful city with a lot to offer
This is part of why my criticism is so sharp. The squandered potential is what hurts. I will be honest, I do not complain about problems in desert cities like Phoenix or rust belt cities in economic ruin. They find themselves in irreversible long-term quagmires.
But, cities like SF and Seattle that are flourishing, have all the potential in the world to have liveable city-cores like some east-coast cities or other global cities. Seattle is gorgeous, with amazing food and potential for liveliness. But, the complete reluctance to acknowledge the problem and the possibility of some obvious solutions is agonizing.
I will lay them out in as clear words as possible.
1. Being weak-on-crime & homeless-friendly encourages more crime & homeless migrants.
2. A rapidly growing city needs rapidly growing housing.
Some supporting proof of seattle's homelessness problems in comparison to peer cities:
[1] High base and increase in Seattle homelessness - http://www.citymayors.com/society/usa-cities-homelessness.ht...
[2] High rate of mentally ill homeless in Seattle - https://dynomight.net/homeless-crisis/ (specifically: https://dynomight.net/img/homeless-crisis/coc/WA-Seattle%20K...)
[3] Mind-bogglingly high rate of meth use in Seattle - https://dynomight.net/img/p2p-meth/metabolites.svg
combine these factors with political entrenchment and the only solution for the individual is to recognize these issues, move to somewhere with lower population density, and don't make the same mistake twice when it comes to voting for bills and elected officials, and, more generally, in being unafraid to value societal cohesion and trust, regardless of whether it's politically popular to do so.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/sa...
The policy makers are bonkers.
The class difference in these areas is staggering. The taxation method is regressive (at least in Seattle and Washington). And there's very little public service outside of neo-liberal solutions provided to the greater city.
That said, I hate the cities vs. towns debate because it dismisses the fact that people are different, and value different experiences. Cities offer a lot of things that smaller communities don't. There's much more vibrant arts scenes, a greater variety of amenities (bars, restaurants, concert venues, museums, etc.) and much greater diversity. Traffic isn't a problem if you don't own a car, and city neighborhoods (outside downtown) can provide more a sense of community than you might think. The tradeoff is, of course, space and affordability. For some people, that tradeoff is worth it, and for others it isn't.