I could go through why each of the solutions are economically, socially, and legally infeasible, but thats a lot of writing haha.
What I can say is that it is a crazy complicated issue and I have yet to hear any good solutions. Affordable housing doesn’t work. Rounding up and incarcerating or institutionalizing them is illegal, inhumane, and won’t work.
The will to spend hundreds of millions to solve the issue is there. But we have no idea what will work, and residents & businesses are getting fedup with ever rising taxes and an ever worsening homeless/crackhead problem.
Despite that, Seattle is still the best city/metro in the country to live in IMO. homelessness is an issue, but far, far from the all encompassing issue some media would have you believe.
I’m sure it is. Do you think something can be done about the lack of sewage? I’m sure there are many complicating factors I’m unaware of, but I’m having a hard time understanding why basic measures like keeping our public spaces free of human excrement seem to grow further out-of-reach and increasingly problematic.
Generally-speaking, I don’t expect government to achieve much at all, but public sanitation is something I’m definitely on board with. We had it down pat for so long.
My sister has lived in Seattle for 6 years and I’ve visited her often. Gone all over the city, had even visited there when I was in the Marines while doing an op in Bremerton of all places (overwatch for refueling of a nuclear sub), and it is an awesome place. Seriously. Has it’s bad parts like any place, but no worse than anywhere else. Kind people, great food, awesome sights, an overall outdoors and active atmosphere, lakes, trails, AND weed is legal. Seattle has been an absolute blast every time I’ve gone, to the point that I half-seriously applied for several plant manager and project manager jobs out there before chickening out because my career exists almost exclusively in VA. Just some extra perspective.
I believe it is fudged stats and a policy to not pursue property crimes below a certain $ value. Give me a high enough $ limit, and I will end all property crime as commissioner!
Now, I can’t be totally sure of that, but it is a heavy component of the London ‘crime drop.’ Which is fucking news to everyone there.
It is illegal to shit on the street. Pretty unenforceable though. Can’t have 100 cops on eagle eyed poopy duty, then tie up city jail and judicial resources all to put them back out on the street 12 hours later for them to do it again. Just not worth it.
The tent camps are just that, camps. They don’t have bathrooms. If they did have portajohns, those would be knocked over and destroyed within 6 hours of placement. Businesses don’t want homeless using their facilities because of drug use and vandalism. But mostly It’s people choosing to not use bathrooms, just like a lot of homeless prefer to live on the streets rather than a shelter/halfway house situation.
And fwiw, it’s not like it’s everywhere. About as common as dog shit on sidewalk in a big city.
Well, the same has been said of vandalism and loitering. NY did get some way into tackling that. It’s also a huge quality of life boost to residents to not be surrounded by fecal matter.
But surely there’s a mechanism to stop this? Dublin has a large homeless population and I don’t often encounter human poop.
Like, I don’t live there, but sanitary policing has been done in large cities before now.
Edit: I ask because I don’t know, but does New York have a similar issue? Is the problem ubiquitous in American cities?
No, of course not. I’m just taking as correct the anecdotal reports and data that it’s an increasing problem. It would be mad if it was a daily encounter.
Ireland’s capital city. If you ever come let me know, I’ll show you the best bars.
Idk about LA, never lived there. From what I’ve seen though, la homelessness and the big sanitary issue stems from the VERY large Skid Row homeless encampment. It’s skin to a slum.
Seattle and SF have lots of homeless, but the camps are fairly small-the biggest ones might have 50-60. I think that is a big reason why the sanitary problem in LA is likely much worse than SF or Seattle.
I bet you also didn’t know that pretty much any city in America built before 1900 dumps raw sewage into the nearest waterbody during rain events. My BIL comes back from surfing ocean Beach in SF on big days noticably smelling of sewage.
Combined sewer systems are real, and still very common in the USA. Why? “The solution, to pollution, is dillution” haha
Hell no! We absolutely should be working to find the RIGHT answers, b/c the answers we have now aren’t working despite the crazy amount of money bring spent.
I’m just saying the problem isn’t as bad as I think a lot of “outsiders” think it is. The headlines are scary and paint it as a huge problem everyday for locals… And it’s just not.