Hacker News Reader

> It's getting kind of frustrating that every time my hometown comes up, someone inevitably mentions this without bringing up any of the complexities as to why.

Maybe because it is true and that’s hard for you to face?

I didn’t grow up in Seattle, but I lived in the city for 25 years. The problems have only exponentially increased over the last decade. The pandemic didn’t help things either.

For all the posturing, Seattle doesn’t ACTUALLY want to fix anything. They want to do things that get them karma on social media, that keep politicians getting re-elected. Politicians, churches, average citizens, doesn’t matter. A dramatic change is needed in Seattle to make it better for everyone involved, but I don’t see that happening in my lifetime.

FWIW I lived in Seattle for 4 months in 2019 and was shocked at how abhorrent the downtown has gotten, compared to how it was in 2013. I’ve lived in cities all over the east coast, and none of them have compared to the amount of poverty and drug culture I saw in Seattle.

I moved to NYC and couldn’t be happier. I’m genuinely of the opinion that Seattle, Portland, SF, etc are broken and any comments which try to downplay that are only making things worse in the long run.

Maybe the issue lies with America not Seattle? A harsh unforgiving society coupled with a lack of a social safety net. Throw in easy access to drugs and things go to hell quickly.

These problems don't exist in NEARLY the same magnitude in the rest of the country. Fucking Detroit is a much nicer place to be than Seattle now, because _they're working on fixing their problems_. Seattle just blames Trump and warns against hobophobia, then continues along blindly.

These cities also have a housing affordability issue. They all refuse to build enough housing - especially mixed development. It’s not really a shock as to why homelessness is rising when you literally can’t afford a roof and everything else gets more expensive because of landlords leaching all the money out of the economy.

> a lack of a social safety net

That is so easy to disprove. SF spends 1.1B on homelessness (more than 50K per homeless person). Federal government spends 6-700B on medicaid (health services for poor). California's 2022-23 spending plan provides over $25 billion from the General Fund for human services programs.

Maybe, you can complain that that spending is "inefficient", but that becomes a political barb-trading after that.

It's replicated all over America, because the zoning policies adopted in the 70s-90s have proven disastrous, but Seattle is absolutely responsible for its part in failing to build enough housing to keep up with growth.

Homeless services have probably gotten better in the last 10 years (I assume) while homelessness has gotten much worse. I assume the underlying issue isn’t the services but rather something else. My guess is housing has become too expensive.

Housing has gotten more expensive and there's been a huge wave of immigration to the region. I've lived here 35 years, the resistance from single family homeowners on any push to improve is staggering.

It's more complex than housing imo. There's an entire culture of people who wouldn't take the housing if you gave it to them. I've seen it first hand.

My understanding is that around 60-70% of the homeless in SF used to have a home/work and wish to be productive members of society but have fallen on hard times for one reason or another. So 30-40% are in the "wouldn't take the housing if you gave it to them" group.

Because it has endless strings, hoops, paperwork, and relinquishing freedom attached to it that no one in their right mind would go through or agree with, let alone people who are homeless and barely have the capacity to wake up in the morning.

For some yes, but I'm specifically talking about the cohort who choose that lifestyle and wouldn't take housing no matter what. They prefer to live in a tent in the hillside, with not a shred of responsibility or authority telling them what to do. Many use substances. Our modern society has largely given them the Ok to live this lifestyle with minimal friction, and so they will continue to live it because it's what they desire to do.

I’m not as plugged into local politics as you seem to be, but I’ve lived in Redmond and now live in Seattle. I have never felt unsafe, or like things were “very bad.” There seems to be a lot of pearl clutching because some homeless people exist in a large city. A city that has grown significantly in the last decade (and the decade before that). I’d like for those folks to be thrown a ladder as much as anyone.

Credit where credit is due, the east side has way nicer roads. Money helps, I suppose.

Eastside also buses homeless folks out (or at least used to). They very much care about the facade of cleanliness on the Eastside but not about people nearly as much.

And yeah, agree with you and the parent poster - the issue isn't unique to Seattle, local areas aren't doing enough, and housing has not met demand.

The Eastside just externalizes its homelessness to Seattle by way of King County jail

If only. KC judges and prosecutors are loathe to put people in jail these days. They were even talking about releasing that guy who bashed in the head of an Amazon worker in beltown.

Doesn't matter - if they get bussed there and released, they're now in Seattle and no longer Redmond and Bellevue's problem.

In Seattle you can throw up a tent and you might have to remove it a few weeks later. In Bellevue, you lay down on a bench and swat is out in 5 minutes (even if you won’t go to jail, the police will harass you enough that you’ll leave). Bellevue makes it annoying to do illegal things, Seattle makes it convenient, so of course they are going to head to Seattle, it’s simply the path of least resistance.

So basically, the Bellevue homelessness policy is Not In My Back Yard.

It’s basically enforce laws aggressively, and make the problem go to the more permissive city. It wouldn’t work if Seattle police started enforcing laws, Bellevue would be screwed at that point.

It is illegal to ban camping unless free housing is available: https://mrsc.org/stay-informed/mrsc-insight/october-2022/new... It's Bellevue that is violating the law by enforcing an unconstitutional ordinance, rather than the people sleeping on benches.

They don’t bus anymore. They just enforce laws really strict so Seattle looks appealing (where laws are more loosely enforced), and then metro won’t stop you from boarding if you can’t pay the fare.

> the east side has way nicer roads

Someone have never driven down Avondale or West Lake Sammamish.

Crime is at half the rate it was back in the 80s, but it kinda seems like wealthy folks hate seeing poverty more than they hated actual crimes.

Bellevue doesn’t really have to directly shunt people to Seattle. All they have to do is be annoying enough in strictly enforcing their laws (via arrest, even if king county won’t prosecute), which just makes it more convenient to be in Seattle if you want to sleep on a bench or something (Bellevue will have swat out in 5 minutes if you so much as lay down on a bench in a park). And there is a huge fentanyl crisis going on, and Seattle’s drug permissive law enforcement just means we get more of it (especially here in Ballard).

I lived in the city proper for a long time and only moved out (Tacoma - I wonder what your opinion is of here?) post-pandemic, and honestly the city was never that bad for the most part. Now, there are tougher parts, sure. But I think a lot of the city is fine. You may see someone doing drugs in broad daylight but that is never actually dangerous to me in my experience.

Probably a fair criticism of my comment. I do love Seattle and spent ~20 years there and may return.