Seattle

Taking Matters into Their Own Hands Seattle leaders have failed Belltown business owners, allowing drug addicts to take over sidewalks for years. Councilmember Bob Kettle is MIA, Mayor Katie Wilson has no immediate solutions, and City Attorney Erika Evans says she won’t prosecute open-air drug use. So now the owner of Club Dogfish on 3rd Ave is taking matters into his own hands, setting up plants and trees in his vestibule to keep out the fentanyl users. But this move could be a violation of a city ordinance to keep public spaces clear. So now the showdown begins. Will the city give small business owners a break or will they selectively enforce the law? I wonder if this will be Read More ›

Out of Control As Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson prepares to deliver her first State of the City address, parts of downtown remain a drug infested disaster. Especially the Belltown neighborhood near 2nd Ave and Blanchard St. Sunday evening, I watched dozens of addicts come and go, selling fentanyl in front of children with no cops in sight. Ironically they are using the vestibule of REACH, one of the largest homeless outreach providers funded with taxpayer dollars from the city. Yet REACH leaders can’t even get the situation under control in front of their own HQ. It’s time the Wilson administration do a full audit of these failing organizations. REACH REACH is a division of Evergreen Treatment Services. A couple years Read More ›

The Seahawks Super Bowl parade drew hundreds of thousands of people into Seattle. You would think Mayor Katie Wilson would sweep tents near the Space Needle, one of the crown jewels in the city. Instead, a massive drug tent stood out like a sore thumb. Cops walked by without batting an eye. Another embarrassing moment for the Wilson administration that clearly isn’t ready for the big time.

Even after a Super Bowl win, Seattle leaders failed to clear out the downtown drug dens and black market of stolen goods. Watch as Seahawks fans try to celebrate in the streets while avoiding zombies and fentanyl addicts.

City Plays Whack-A-Mole Homeless outreach workers say encampment sweeps are rapidly picking up across Seattle under Mayor Katie Wilson. The latest one happened Wednesday morning near 6th Ave & Yesler Way in downtown. It’s unclear how many people chose to take services or shelter options. But by all accounts, it’s turning into another game of Whack-A-Mole as Wilson remains under enormous pressure to clear everyone out before the FIFA World Cup later this year. Meanwhile, notice how far-left activist group Stop The Sweeps Seattle is nowhere to be found. They were a constant thorn in the side of former Mayor Bruce Harrell and criticized him for using the same encampment removal methods as Wilson. But when it comes to comrade Read More ›

Even as many volunteers are taking to the cold streets to try to find and quantify the number of homeless Americans living there now, two lawsuits filed late last year in a federal District Court are blocking millions of dollars from reaching the neediest people. The first lawsuit was filed by the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), and the second by a coalition led by Washington State’s Attorney General Nick Brown. The lawsuits seek to stop the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from redirecting a larger share of public dollars to treatment-based homeless programs. Both suits seek to force the continued pretense that permanent subsidized housing projects will end homelessness. These efforts fail the smell test. Read More ›

I went to the Ballard homeless encampment that has been dominating Seattle headlines, and what I found there was not clarity or compassion colliding with cruelty, but a system quietly failing almost everyone involved. Business owners and nearby residents are frustrated and exhausted. They’ve watched the encampment grow while public spaces deteriorate and safety concerns mount. On the other side, homeless advocates are fiercely defending the right of people to remain where they are, arguing that sweeps only deepen trauma and solve nothing. Caught in the middle is a city trying to signal change under new leadership, while offering very little evidence that real change is actually happening. This encampment was scheduled to be swept, but Mayor Katie Wilson halted Read More ›

Zero Solutions Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is getting hammered after another disruptive sweep under her new administration. But the criticism isn’t coming from her comrades with far-left activist group Stop the Sweeps Seattle. Homeless drug addicts say her promise to do things differently from the previous administration hasn’t materialized. The vast majority of the people living at the MLK Jr. Way encampment rejected services and shelter options Wednesday morning, then fled into the deep woods. We Heart Seattle’s Andrea Suarez calls them the “service resistant.” And right now, Mayor Wilson has offered zero solutions to address this group causing the most harm to themselves and the community.

Same Ol’ Same Ol’ Start the sweeps Seattle! Even after Mayor Katie Wilson promised to handle the homeless drug crisis differently, the city is quietly clearing out drug encampments and it’s still a game of Whack-a-mole. The vast majority of people at Wednesday morning’s sweep along Martin Luther King Jr Way rejected shelter options and headed right down the block to set up tents. That’s because they wanted to do their drugs. Difference is, far-left activist group Stop The Sweeps Seattle is surprisingly quiet about the encampment removals under the mayor. Double Standard? Wilson used to lead the Transit Riders Union. This activist group is heavily aligned with Stop the Sweeps. Which is likely why they are going easy on Read More ›

A note to readers: This is an uncomfortable story, as are my conclusions about how society might best address the situation it describes. I prize individual freedom and limited government, and recognize that sanctioning government force in the application of law can be a slippery slope. Yet, neglecting justice to avoid the risks of misapplying it is also a harmful slippery slope, and we see the destructive effects of that error in every city with permissive policies toward drug use, prostitution, and disorder. Ultimately, I can’t ignore the fact that children have a natural right to the dutiful care of their parents. With a wise and creative application of law, it may be possible to uphold a child’s rights even Read More ›