Posted on 04/03/2019 7:08:32 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
For the past five years, like many of its West Coast counterparts, Seattle has endured a steady expansion of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, crime, and street disorder. But the activist class—a political and cultural elite comprising leaders in government, nonprofits, philanthropy, and media—has enforced a strict taboo on declaring the obvious: something is terribly wrong in the Emerald City.
Last month, veteran Seattle reporter Eric Johnson of KOMO violated that taboo with a shocking, hour-long documentary called Seattle is Dying, which revealed how the city has allowed a small subset of the homeless population—drug-addicted and mentally-ill criminals—to wreak havoc. Johnson’s portrait is backed up by evidence from King County homelessness data, by city attorney candidate Scott Lindsay’s “prolific offender” report on 100 homeless individuals responsible for more than 3,500 criminal cases, and by my own reporting on the homelessness crisis.
In the past two weeks, Seattle Is Dying has garnered 38,000 shares on Facebook and nearly 2 million views on YouTube. The report has clearly resonated with anxious, fearful, and increasingly angry Seattle residents. Exhausted by a decade of rising disorder and property crime—now two-and-a-half times higher than Los Angeles’s and four times higher than New York City’s—Seattle voters may have reached the point of “compassion fatigue.” According to the Seattle Times, 53 percent of Seattle voters now support a “zero-tolerance policy” on homeless encampments; 62 percent believe that the problem is getting worse because the city “wastes money by being inefficient” and “is not accountable for how the money is spent,” and that “too many resources are spent on the wrong approaches to the problem.”
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
“which revealed how the city has allowed a small subset of the homeless population—drug-addicted and mentally-ill criminals”
It isn’t a small subset it’s the majority. And their problem is not being homeless, but being drugged out bums and/or mentally ill. Giving them shelter ain’t going to fix their problems. And to fix the problems that they cause the rest of us they have to be forcebly kept off the streets.
And I would immediately defund all the “activists” that are making a fortune encouraging and perpetuating this “homeless” scam.
But at the end of the day the source of the problem is us collectively. We as a society have become too inappropriately “compassionate” , and as a result are easy target to be guilted into tolerating the intolerable and permitting the impermissable. It’s time for tough love and to tell all the bleeding hearts to go to hell.
BFL
I prefer the more apt term, “bums.”
It is not dying a natural death. It is being killed and it is no mercy killing.
“Vote Republican and Save Your City”- should be the top talking point at election time.
“The city’s nonprofit and academic partners—mainstays of the homeless-industrial complex—have also launched coordinated attacks against the critics. Timothy Harris, director of Real Change News, has argued that grassroots neighborhood groups like Speak Out Seattle and labor unions like the Iron Workers Local 86 who opposed the city’s head tax are “alt-right” white supremacists, bigots, and fascists. Catherine Hinrichsen, director of the Project on Family Homelessness at Seattle University, accused Johnson of “hate-mongering” and spreading “fear.””
These are the putrid skunks that must be defeated and banished from society! (apologies to the real skunks).
My son is in the Navy, we went to visit and one day took the ferry to Seattle. Man was I shocked. People lying around all over. An idiot raving like a banshie in Pioneer park. We did the Underground Seattle tour, it was very good, helped to miss a lot of Bums. On the way back to the ferry was disconcerting as we had to travel by several camps. Just stinking ugly, going by the crazy’s. We didn’t visit again. Thank you you Demo Creeps.
“How exactly is it dying?”
I’m mystified that the local population doesn’t cause changes. What’s the explanation for that?
The only people living in our major cities today are the elite ,welfare parasites and street bums. The middle class fled them years ago...perhaps decades ago.
My gramps calls them bums, vagrants, hobo’s, junkies. I’ve seen pictures of Hooverville’s in Seattle that were clean and well cared for during the beginnings of the Great Depression.
Is Seattle another city where dogs worry about stepping in human crap?
I haven't spent much time in Fargo, but we have them in Alaska.
Exactly. Economics 101, subsidize something you get more of it (vagrants). Tax something you get less of it (productive members of a community). Communists and demonicrats (but I repeat) have been denying the laws of economics for nearly 2 centuries.
It's the drugs.
It includes marijuana. It's all drugs.
Pretty much my theory too.
And that is precisely where we are heading, to the endless joy of our political class, downhill...with our foot planted heavily on the gas pedal.
Fuehreress AOC - or some other more physically attractive and engaging personality - is coming Hell-bent to create the brave new world. And the country will fall for it...as they always do.
This is what's happening. Americans have been like the proverbial frog in the pan of boiling water, viz. it's been so gradual they don't realize what's happening.
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”
Any system that allows lawmakers into office, simply by lawmakers promising more and more free stuff to constituents, that system will implode.
In the video, the local population is in an uproar, but their elected leaders are ignoring them.
The point is repeatedly made in the video, that it’s a DRUG problem, not merely a homelessness problem. Addicts & their dealers are making life a dangerous hell for everyone.
The local police are in an uproar, too. They’re being undermined by liberal judges who repeatedly put offenders back on the street.
Watch the video. A solution is offered. It really is worth an hour.
Most LA bums in Garcetti’s army are white, a few blacks and even fewer latinos.
More money only greases the palms of elected officials.
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