Here’s the kernel of Alex Berezow’s op-ed in the Seattle Times, “After 14 years, I’ve had it. I’m leaving Seattle”:
I told my council member that Northgate, my home, had seen a noticeable increase in litter and graffiti. To my dismay, she seemed to suggest these issues were someone else’s job, not hers. So, I moved on to a bigger issue: homelessness.
When I first moved to Seattle 14 years ago, to attend the University of Washington, homelessness essentially didn’t exist at Northgate. Though I have never been a victim of or witness to a crime, some of my neighbors have been, and they believe homeless camps are the reason. Additionally, the conditions in such camps are often atrocious — not only are the homeless more likely to be victims of violent crime, they are susceptible to infectious disease, such as the hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego that sickened nearly 500 people and has killed 20.
I believe strongly that it is not compassionate to leave people who are unable or unwilling to care for themselves to suffer and die on the street. Because many (but certainly not all) homeless people struggle with mental illness or drug addiction, I suggested that Seattle find a way to make it easier to provide treatment to these troubled souls — involuntarily, if need be. It could literally save their lives.
Juarez exclaimed, “What is this? Nazi Germany?â€
Appalled — in part because my grandparents survived Nazi Germany — I got up and walked out.
I must be out of touch. It doesn’t seem to me that calling a constituent a Nazi should be an elected official’s first resort. Not even if the constituent comes into her office wearing a mustache, an armband, and shouting “Sieg Heil!”
He goes on to cite a number of other examples.
Here’s my question. Why is Seattle so angry? I can only speculate that its elected officials think that anger is working for them.
Do those officials think Seattle’s success (really hot economy from being Amazon’s HQ) is their creation vs being a stroke of luck?
I have to say calling a constituent a Nazi to their face is somewhat beyond calling them deplorables.
Seattle is a huge, diverse city, even more so than when I lived near there in the 1990’s. While I understand the author’s sentiments, I’m not sure that one individual’s experience can reflect an entire city.
I’ve only visited there, (3 times). I did notice large numbers of homeless, I’m nosey so I spoke to some of them, mostly, they have family somewhere, but due to alcoholism or drug addiction, they aren’t welcome at this time. Seattle is friendly to their homeless, compared to Lincoln, Ne. Here, most camp out along the creeks, hidden from view. Yes there are shelters, but in good weather, they prefer the freedom of the hiding places. In Seattle I first noticed the long lines of homeless, I was told that’s needle exchange, which we don’t do. But also the weather is always nice in Seattle, plus, geographically, it’s really cool, not so much here.
It’s the Seattle City Council; how much of that is to blame on the citizenry I don’t know. Here are three recent ordinances that were struck down by liberal judges::
1. “first-come, first-served†mandated that landlords must rent to the first qualified tenant who applies, rather than choosing from a pool of applicants.
2. Seattle wealth tax (2.25 percent tax on total income above $250,000 for individuals and above $500,000 for married couples), which state law did not authorize.
3. A city’s ordinance allowing garbage collectors to look through people’s trash to make sure food scraps aren’t going into the garbage.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/meet-the-pin-to-seattles-liberal-bubble-attorney-ethan-blevins/
As a resident of Seattle, I would like to say “bite me!”
To be fair, though, rounding up the homeless, to diagnose them and involuntarily commit them to some institution somewhere does seem a bit like creating concentration camps. Anyone who suggests something along the lines of harm reduction for the homeless problem here, moving them out of the way, ends up developing kinder and gentler concentration camps — more like the WWII era internment camps for Japanese Americans rather than death camps. I can see anyone getting snippy after hearing this the ten thousandth time.
The homeless problem is a significant, somewhat intractable problem — our weather is too nice, and Amazon has completely distorted the real estate market so a lot of people cannot afford housing. We need to build more housing for all income levels.
@Gustopher, I visited Seattle many times in the early 90s when my best friend moved there for grad school, and my impression was that Seattle had more homeless people then than I recall seeing anywhere before or since. I basically categorized it as part of grunge culture, people dressed like out-of-work lumberjacks with drug and alcohol addictions having status. (My impression here is that the guy is saying this hasn’t been a problem in Northgate before; maybe he moved further North thinking he would be away from the problem).
Still, Seattle has had more construction going on than any other city in the U.S., and I guess the question is whether overseas speculators will buy them up.
The funniest part of the referenced article is the author says he’s moving to the Eastside. That’s equivalent to saying I don’t like San Francisco so I am going to Berkeley!