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Reality Check Major Sound Transit (@SoundTransit) stops in Seattle are closed this weekend including Pioneer Square and International District/Chinatown. Commuters have to take shuttle buses above ground. For some, it’s forcing them to see the urban decay for the first time in downtown hot spots like 3rd Ave near City Hall. It’s super risky out here when almost everyone is smoking fentanyl and conducting all kinds of illicit activity in tents. So there are transit security guards nearby. However, volunteers including high school students with Westgate Chapel remain unfazed. They come to the underbelly of the city to serve and say what’s happening out here is spiritual warfare, also caused by a breakdown in the traditional family unit. They believe Read More ›

Breaking Huge encampment fire Sunday in Seattle near Robert Eagle Staff Middle School at the corner of N.90th & Nesbit Ave. Unclear how it started. It appears at least four tents got obliterated. But more than a dozen are still standing on the block. Neighbor shot this photo on the ground. I just spotlighted this problematic encampment a few days ago. It’s been growing here for months. Along with this latest incident, the encampment has been blamed for shootings, open air drug use, and harboring a sex offender. How many more incidents will it take before the city sweeps? City Warned So many neighbor complaints. This encampment remains a major liability. Homeless Encampment Fire More video and images coming in Read More ›

Only 16 people have been housed in units with only 11 landlords participating in the program since the program’s launch in 2022 which had a goal of 800 units. A Seattle area program that offers funds to landlords to incentivize them to rent vacant units to the homeless has hit a snag, as there are more units available than eligible homeless people. Because of this, landlords are being turned away from the program. The agency, however, continues to say that they need more units. The King County Regional Homeless Authority (KCRHA) in Washington State has confirmed that landlords in Seattle are being turned away from a program aimed at incentivizing them to take in homeless tenants. Advocates for those living on the streets Read More ›

With Seattle public schools starting back up in less than a month, there is growing concern about an encampment exploding in size at the corner of North 90th Street and Nesbit Avenue. The encampment is just a one-minute walk from Robert Eagle Staff Middle School and is taking up entire sidewalks. The tents and structures are located behind Aurora Commons drop-in center for the homeless and have been there for more than four months. Staff at Aurora Commons say authorities have responded to shootings at the encampment and that open-air drug use is a regular occurrence in the parking lot. Grant, a homeless man in the encampment only wants me to use his first name and says he’s trying to Read More ›

This column is the second in a series. To read part one, click here. I’ll come back to the sights and sounds of the Orange County Rescue Mission, but after four days there I flew to San Francisco and walked around that city. The old song notwithstanding, few Americans these days leave their hearts there. Tourists still visit Fisherman’s Wharf and ride the cable cars, but books with titles like San Fransicko hit hard, and videos of addicts in SF’s Tenderloin neighborhood are stomach-churning. What’s happening in San Francisco is both better and worse than those dramatic presentations. The Noe Valley neighborhood, for instance, features Victorian houses, small markets, and cafes. Nearby Bernal Heights (sometimes referred to as “maternal heights”) Read More ›

Exclusive King County Executive Dow Constantine (@kcexec) says “I’m not familiar with the situation you’re talking about,” after I asked him why landlords were being turned away from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s (@kingcorha) highly touted incentive program to get people off the streets. It’s a story KVI Radio’s Ari Hoffman (@thehoffather) and I broke earlier this week. Either Constantine was giving me spin today, or his media handler Chase Gallagher did not brief him on the situation. Constantine is on the KCRHA Governing Committee, responsible for oversight and approving budgets. Either way, Constantine went on to say he believes they should be working with more landlords in the private sector and gave a vote of confidence to KCRHA. Read More ›

Homeless advocates, politicians, and leaders at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) continue to say that “housing saves lives” and affordable housing is the solution to homelessness. King County Executive Dow Constantine has said that “we must make it affordable for everyone here,” and KCRHA interim CEO Helen Howell wants “every person [to] have a roof over their head.” This is why KCRHA launched a landlord incentive program in 2022 that promised housing providers an attractive package in “an effort to end homelessness.” The incentive program offered landlords on-time payment backed by KCRHA and tenant conflict resolution in exchange for rental units for the homeless. Funding for “Partnership for Zero,” a publicly and privately funded program, would offset the Read More ›

Crushing Expectations Kristine Moreland (@kmmoreland) and volunteers with “The More We Love” are way ahead of schedule. Only a handful of tents remain at the Grocery Outlet encampment in downtown Burien. No sweeps required. Most of the campers are being placed into tiny houses, motels, or detox facilities…FREE WILL CHOICE. But one man went on a bender after refusing to leave and was arrested by Burien Police (@BurienPD.) Otherwise, Moreland expects everything to be gone by Tuesday evening. When all is said and done, this needs to be a case study on how to do outreach. This was never about building more housing, spending lots of money, or warehousing people with foolish “housing first” policies. Instead, they leveraged resources already Read More ›

Rinse and Repeat The vicious cycle continues. Lake City has some of the most problematic encampments. For some reason, the city allows it to pile up instead of getting in front of these situations. Monday morning, vast majority of people walked away from the sweep without taking any help being offered. Once again, it’s the drugs and mental illness fueling this crisis on the streets. This part of the neighborhood around NE 125th St and 33rd Ave NE is also home to several low income housing apts and low barrier units. In other words, this is ground zero for a drug fueled ecosystem. No idea how you run a business around here. The owners of the Ethiopian restaurant say the Read More ›

Why are they letting crime run rampant in cities? Why don’t they mandate treatment to the people living and dying on the streets? Watch Michael Shellenberger speak on the ideology behind progressive cities allowing their citizens to live and die on the streets. Shellenberger created the North America Recovers Coalition that Discovery Institute is proud to be a founding member of. Watch the speech here. Read some highlights here: My own journey on this issue began after writing Apocalypse Never. I was getting ready to go on book tour, and save nuclear plants around the world, and then covid hit. It was very disorienting, as all of you can remember  I found myself feeling sad about it. I’ve been teaching myself Read More ›