homeless

A year ago, Kaylee Gordon was setting up camp deep in the woods of West Seattle. “I feel safe in this spot,” she told me. At the time, Kaylee was hopeful that her future contained a career in music. “It’s always been my passion, it’s my life,” she said. She sang, played guitar, and told me this season of homelessness was just a speed bump along her journey. “So, this isn’t really in character for me,” Kaylee told me, saying that her beloved dog and her guitar were enough to get by. This week, over a year later, she was spotted in Belltown entering Dan’s convenience store on Third Avenue. Without shoes, dirty, and disheveled security guard Giovanni English tried Read More ›

Back to California. Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths, first staged in 1902, focuses on run-down people living in a flophouse: Vaska the thief, Nastya the prostitute, Luka the tramp, and Kvashnya the meat-pie seller, along with a downwardly-mobile baron, a suicidal actor, and others equally miserable. But in the play, at least temporarily, they are alive and conscious. If fentanyl had hit Russia then, even famed Moscow Arts Theater director Konstantin Stanislavski would have been stymied in creating some dramatic action: Users of the synthetic opioid are often inactive, with stiff limbs. Gorky portrayed lower depths, but fentanyl drops users in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district into the lowest depths, close to death. I’ve walked many crime-ridden areas by day, but Read More ›

Seattle Problems This bizarre encounter happened on I-5 Thursday during a busy evening commute in #Seattle. Witnesses say a homeless woman was wearing a clear plastic bag on her head and carrying sack full of vegetation. Cops showed up and tried to talk her off the ledge. She was also swinging some type of metal object. Just another day in the Emerald City. @GovInslee @kcexec @MayorofSeattle @KC_RHA @KCCouncil @SeattleCouncil @CMTammyMorales @CMSaraNelson @CMTMosqueda @D5Juarez Walked Her Off the Ledge It appears this situation was eventually resolved with no one seriously hurt. There are still dozens of encampments on @WSDOT properties in #Seattle. Ask any commuter. I see homeless people constantly crossing busy highways or walking in the breakdown lanes daily.