Most agree that homelessness is a big problem in Ballard, but the debate rages over what to do about it. The removal of “unsanctioned campers” from Ballard Commons Park and the new fencing under the Ballard Bridge are two recent examples that have sparked heated conversations both on My Ballard and off.
Now there’s a new effort to help. Through a partnership with REACH and the Ballard Alliance, Ballard now has a dedicated “outreach case manager” working with the homeless community. Her name is Paige Killinger.
“Homelessness is a multifaceted issue and it can happen to anyone,” Killinger told the Ballard Alliance, which published a story in its newsletter. “I have met with people who grew up in Ballard and had professions, but different circumstances, such as a heart attack and mounting medical bills, led them to a life of homelessness. All of my client’s needs are different, so my job begins with reaching out to them, having a conversation and building trust.”
Killinger says her top priority is connecting the homeless with services that can help. She’ll also interface with local businesses and neighbors. She works for REACH, which is a program from Evergreen Treatment Services, a local non-profit that “provides street-based, case management and outreach services.”
“During our initial planning, it was our hope to fund a half-time outreach worker focused on the Ballard area,” said Ballard Alliance Executive Director Mike Stewart in the newsletter. “Through our partnership with REACH, we were able to leverage our funding to secure a match from the King County Department of Health. We’ve essentially doubled our anticipated service levels and are creating a model program that we hope will be emulated by other neighborhood improvement districts across the city.”
You may see Killinger out in the neighborhood, and she’s set up office hours at the Ballard Library every Tuesday from 10 a.m. to noon. All are welcome to stop in, say hello and ask questions.
Haha, of course they’re going to run the junkie hobo outreach out of the library.
Hopefully Paige will be handing out free needles and advising her “clients” the best way to secure freebies so that they can continue to wander, steal, harass, and assault the loathsome working taxpayers who are too busy working 50+ hours per week to pay the absurdly high taxes (hello raised rent!) justified by this army of unmanageable, dysfunctional adult children.
The city should assign a task force to remove the hobos from parks and public spaces and get them housed, trained or relocated elsewhere.
The part that will no doubt be missing from the Outreach dialog, will be, “Sir/Maam, you can’t do the shit you are doing here anymore. No more meth, no more heroin, cut back on the booze, and no yelling at night. Stop, or your sorry ass goes to rehab, jail, or maybe even a bus ticket to …..Boise, where they will really kick your sorry butt. By the way, how’s that job search going?”
Sometimes a little tough love is needed, and until that happens we are in for months or even years of the same old litter, needles, and 24 hour parking around The Library and The Commons.
I’m really thankful our neighbors are getting this attention and care. Hospitality and support are such beautiful things to have in community as economically diverse as ours.
Dear Paige:
Please start with that knucklehead on the north side of the library whose tent has been parked in the middle of the sidewalk for the last month.
What, no budget for the hobos’ dogs? This seems racist/sexist/species-ist. Hopefully we can set up a fundraiser and get our neighbors some much needed new face piercings and tattoos.
@Uff Da
You can’t use “Sir/Ma’am” anymore: Zher Hir Zhe etc
She should really just resort to posting anonymous comments on the worst designed website ever instead of actually putting forth an effort.
@Commoner
Hey, it’s one thing to waste our money on junkies who refuse services and turn around and steal from taxpayers, but *shaming* us on top of it while we dodge these creeps or get car prowled is a whole new level of Seattle Prog Shaming. Bold! 5/5 Stars
You ever consider a City Council run?
@Rat City Politics
Go retreat to your basement and keep popping pills
@Rat City
Sorry snowflake!
@Megan the Diet Enthusiast
Believe it or not, I would prefer to have a safer, cleaner city – ya know what we PAY for – so that we can all enjoy it; even people who insult me or whom I disagree with. I know it’s fashionable to HATE the working taxpayers, Megan, but pull back your (presumably) blue hair and try to imagine the city WITHOUT legions of hoodlums, junkies, and felons wandering about. Once upon a time, Brooklyn was a sh*thole, and now it’s safe even for the snowflakes…now that I think about it, though, maybe that wasn’t such a great trade.
You travel much? A city this size should not have this much subsidized scumbaggery.
@Rat City
You pay taxes, so there should be no poor people, got it!
Just what the HepC branch of the cities libraries needs.
I remember back when I was in short pants, citizens tried to look and see how they could improve their community. Now people just view the government as a maid service.
@Concerned Ballard Parent
No, we should have a functional law enforcement strategy and a zero tolerance policy on disgusting and dangerously anti social behavior. While the Hoovervilles from the Depression days were horrific, and we should do what we can to help those WILLING TO CHANGE, we have woefully accustomed ourselves to dramatically lowered standards of conduct in the last few decades.
Poverty=/=Crime. That myth is floated to set a low bar of acceptable behavior and excuse a permissive system that enables the behavior and ultimately profits from it: see single motherhood, welfare and the prison industrial system. Additionally, many poor countries have exceedingly high standards of behavior, so in a wealthy “world class city” it’s even more pathetic that permissive Boomers and their Millennials snowflakes rob us to subsidize their pets who also rob us.
“Now people just view the government as a maid service….” No truer words have been spoken on the topic.
@RAT CITY POLITICS
You sound like the snowflake
@Concerned Ballard Parent
Ok then. Can I have my taxes back? Can you reimburse me for stolen property or compensate my friends who were chased at night by hoodlums Downtown? You see, there’s something called – and I know this might be a bit of a reach for an Oprah viewer – the “Social Contract”. No, it isn’t social media. Give it a “google” and see what you might learn. Namaste or God Bless or whatever they say now.
@Rat City
Sorry snowflake, your whining isn’t working on us.
For those of you who are glossary challenged, at least be original as well as accurate in the slang terms you use. Snowflake has lots of meanings, in fact maybe if you look in the mirror as you mouth the word, you may recognize something familiar.
What do you think there, “snowflake?”
http://college.usatoday.com/2017/02/01/the-origin-of-the-term-snowflake-may-surprise-you/
For immediate Release
The Ballard Public Library will be undergoing a renovation to remove 2000 books and four common use tables. The reconfigured 400 square foot space will now function as an outreach facility for REACH. While introducing the project, SPL Chief Librarian Marcellus Turner kicked off the event by saying “We always wanted to offer patrons less books for adults, and more creepy folks to wander around the kids area. This partnership with REACH will do just that!” Seattle Public Library estimates that the project will be completed by mid May, and that the space will double the number of all-day library users.
***
@Dog Lover
Hey, I dunno, maybe some people get more accustomed to feces and develop a tolerance. Not sure it’s a virtue. There is probably some longitudinal study somewhere about disgust thresholds and the corresponding apathy towards shared spaces. Then again, if it isn’t on Snapchat it doesn’t exist.
Please curb your dog and remember, some people are allergic to your “babies.”
Some people are allergic to peanuts should we ban them as well?
Toughen up
Mostly allergic to being forced to subsidize crime.
Actually if we could get the homeless that are willing an able to work in a peanut factory or a dog kennel, hey that would be great. Also, strange talk about tough. Some of us don’t need to train something to love us back.
I don’t nerd any help from this newbie. Go back to popping pills in your basement.
I commend young Paige’s efforts to help our houseless neighbors. Can I suggest she check in on some of the poor folkx living in RVs in Freelard. Best to check in on them around 4am when they finish their rounds.
@BEAT
Isnt that what kids are? I don’t have a dog but I’d rather sit next to one at a restaurant than some whiny pissant kid.
It’s really great when you have homeless junkies wondering around the Burk Gilman trail leaving their garage, other crap setting fires, stealing, graffiti on local businesses who then have to pay to have it removed the trail has had a few fires. By the canal their is always tents recently a RV parked across the Burke gilman trail between Fremont and Ballard. Wtf! If you decide to do herion and you become homeless why should we have to help you? I say forced inpatient treatment for these homeless drug addicts. I understand there is some that are not doing herion or meth but I feel the druggies outnumber the regular folks. Too many thefts and to much trash to say these folks are wanting help.
(*Correction Garbage, not garage) they leave garbage everywhere especially along Burke gilman trail where several fires have happened. It’s high time to get this situation f sorted out with some kind of real goals before the next summer arrives, the homeless spread further across our City trashing where they please.
I have lived in Seattle for 25 years. It’s genuinely sad to see so many resentful, racist comments on this blog. I know Ballard is better than that overall, but it sure ruins the quality of community here online. It’s a shame; this could be a useful place. With respect to the admins: the main site is great, but the platform you give these angry folks doesn’t do anything for the community; quite the opposite, in fact. Frankly, it reinforces the worst stereotypes about our city. I know it’s not easy, and it’s apparently already been settled, but a little moderation can go a long way.
I’m glad to see resources being made available in Ballard and will welcome Paige when I see her. Meanwhile, here’s another constructive way to engage with the problem of homelessness:
http://www.homelessinfo.org
@BALLARDSHOUDN’THATE
Feel free to shelter as many heroin junkies as you like at your house, white hipster.
@BALLARDSHOUDN’THATE
Racist comments? Where on this thread?
And another member of the homeless-industrial complex weighs in. We should start over and re-invent who gets tax dollars to assist in dealing with the problems associated with homelessness and drug addiction, because the current version of “help” is not working.
Haha “racist”? Most of these feral folks are youngish strung out white dudes with the occasional female sidekick.
Get a grip. Just how much more money should we throw at this relatively small amount of service resistant people?
Also, as per today’s article in the times, many of these poor dears don’t find available shelter space “desirable” enough…maybe a nice condo with a view, wifi, and a 5 gallon bucket of smack (oops, or meth. Don’t want to discriminate against ones choice of drugs)
@Uff da: “Sometimes a little tough love is needed…”
These people are heroin addicts and mentally ill. They don’t need tough love, they need help. And until that happens, the cycle will continue. I know you “tough guys” equate help with weakness, but you’ll just have to get over yourselves.
Thanks for playing though!
” racist comments ”
Thank you for pointing out our unconscious racist biases as white people. We white folkx need to give space to PoC in our daily lives, including offering our couches to any houseless native americans we find in Ballard.
William: you, as a cis-white male, you should NOT speak for PoC. Simple keep your mouth shut and nod your head in compliance.
And when you are called a racist and sexist, do not attempt to reshape the accusation any way.
“They don’t need tough love, they need help”
The city offers help with wrap around services, including housing, drug and alcohol, and mental health care, which the vast majority consistently refuse. The sweeps under I5 last in the Jungle only 24% accepted help. The others? They moved to Ballard apparently to continue the parrrrhhhty.
” Of 357 folks counted living in The Jungle last spring, all were contacted multiple times with offers of temporary shelter, legal help, alcohol or drug rehab (which typically includes housing) or financial assistance to reunite with family. They were given choices of going to a faith-based shelter like Union Gospel, and some secular options. In the end, 87 accepted — 24 percent.”
Source: Seattle Times using city figures
Maybe it’s time to add a little stick to your failed “carrot only” model.
I agree with you Intersectional Suzy and I am sorry for my presumptuousness to speak on behalf of PoC. All white people must acknowledge they are racist and benefit from cis white male patriarchal systems of capitalist oppression.
Again, I apologize.
@Fart: Your numbers are right, but tell a false story. Pretty much all of the shelters, and I think 100% for faith based, do not allow drug or alcohol use while staying there, but do not provide any rehab services whatsoever.
Most of the rehab clinics that are for the homeless do not include housing. The ones that do cost a lot of money or have very few openings. The same goes for mental health.
So yeah, 76% “refused” help, but the refusal was more likely that they couldn’t meet the conditions of shelter. I believe the Seattle Times article you reference touches on that, you just conveniently left it out.
You should venture down into The Jungle one of these days (my guess is you’d be crying for your mom after a few minutes). You’ll notice VERY quickly that it’s not a place that you choose to stay because you’re some angsty homeless person that sticks their nose up at society. Pretty much all of them have no other choice and they can stay because nobody is going to go in there and dislodge them.
So the carrot we’re tying to encourage them with is moldy and rotten. Instead of trying to get a fresher carrot, like first world countries tend to do, we immediately go to the stick. Well, we can see where that got us!
“more likely that they couldn’t meet the conditions of shelter”
Jeez, can you set the bar any lower? I mean, my two year old could get accepted into a shelter and he still shits in his pants and cusses like a sailor.
“we immediately go to the stick”
In Seattle? Thanks for the laugh. Seriously, you’re delusional.
“the platform you give these angry folks doesn’t do anything for the community; quite the opposite, in fact. ”
I agree. Ballard Commons is a total sh*thole now.
@BallardShouldn’tHate
Tone policing is the only kind of policing we have in Seattle. Yes many of us have also lived here 25+ yrs and are p*ssed the city is now an open latrine for felons. Travel much? Own or operate a business?
@Fart: I’d like to see your two year old give up heroin cold turkey and go live in a gospel shelter. I think you’re the delusional one.
Ah, you can always count on Truth for the bass ackwards take on the issue and few cheap shots at the other commenters. The Jungle was allowed to metastasize because it looks like the SPD, the DOT and the CC completely ignored it for decades. If a sane city the citizens would be filing a class-action lawsuit for dereliction of duty, breach of contract, and violation of the public trust due to the crime against persons and property resulting from the “homeless crisis”.
Just admit it, Truth, these kinds of mental gymnastics justifying failed policies and massive tax expenditures are only necessary because the TRUTH IS the city is negligent/and or inept. If city were run properly you wouldn’t have half the taxpayers up in arms about getting shafted and the other delusionally trying to smile their way through the fecal matter, rats, crime, and insanity. Ask that biz owner in Sodo who witnessed the tweaker domestic gun assault by his property. His street is lined with RV felons and the city shrugs.
A “poor person” does not spend $200 per day / $75k per year on meth and heroin. Yeah, the scraggly guy in the tent LOOKS poor, but he is likely burning through a lot more cash than the struggling middle class family living up the street who are forced to subsidize the junkies’ depraved life choices.
It’s both disingenuous and disgusting to throw the small percentage of truly down-and-out people (who deserve society’s help) in with with the vast majority of able-bodied criminal addicts who don’t. Unless, of course, you happen to be one of those naive college kids, or shoulder-chipped ideologues who need to find “injustice” everywhere, even in places where it does not exist.
Ballard’s encampments and RV’s are full of people who wish to remain un-housed because they cannot get high, sell drugs, prostitute-out young runaways, or maintain their fencing operations in a public housing setting. Again, that is not “inequality” That is drug addiction, and those are the fried-brain vagabonds who burned bridges with all their family and friends, and chose to trade their sanity and humanity in for a quick high. Poverty, my @ss.
A two year-old dog, cat, human, goat, lizard – a two-year old ANYTHING has better survival skills than a lost-cause junkie who knew the risks of getting high on highly addictive drugs, but decided to destroy their lives anyway.
Talk to any junkie who made it out alive, and plan to stay that way. They will tell you all this coddling and virtue-signalling doesn’t help anybody (besides the smug ideologue patting themselves on the back) The enabling actually helps addicts kill themselves more effectively.
Last time I checked, “acts of compassion” didn’t involve helping people kill themselves (and others) off.
” I’d like to see your two year old give up heroin cold turkey”
Good to see you acknowledge the problem isn’t “affordable housing” or “capitalism”.
No one listen to Old Ballard F@rt. He is a well-known troll, and I can tell from his use of the word “Sh*thole” that he voted for and supports Donald Trump. Stop this right now! Deplorables like you are the reason I lost the election.
Two hours per week at the Ballard Library may not be enough. I’ve popped in several early afternoons over the last year and at least four times have witnessed an actual arrest by law enforcement or harassment of a librarian or other patron. I no longer GP directly there, and usually request books at another branch instead. Typically, at the Ballard Library, I would’ve also bought something at Walgreens, maybe had coffee… I’m sorry not to patronize Ballard as often, but with so much blatant criminal activity, it makes me nervous at certain times. Hope the Outreach helps.
Wait, what the hell. Is that actually Hillary Clinton? Is she from Seattle???
Cameron– you’re a grown-ass man and you’re afraid to go to the library in Ballard? for real?
It’s funny when comments you usually see on Nextdoor “I saw Jason walking down the street and had to lock all the doors and pull out my .45. He wasn’t even wearing the hockey goalie mask I remember from my youth” suddenly appear on this other blog
@Fart: Not so much Capitalism as plutocracy. The last 50 years of tax cuts on the wealthy took away the true trickle down and allowed GDP to disproportionately accumulate at the top. One of the many public services to go were mental help, addiction help and homeless shelters. We’re now “reaping the rewards” of this new trickle down effect.
@Carly
Newsflash, Ms. Virtue Signal, people don’t care to spend their free time around junkies and their goofball, deluded hippie enablers. I’m assuming there’s a reason you live in Ballard and not, say, Tukwila? 22nd is nonstop ambo and cop activity. Stop it with the denials, personal attacks and obfuscations- Truth has those covered already.
Tiny handed man who dishes out personal attacks cries when confronted. News at 11.
@Truth
Yesterday I was treated to the delightful spectacle of a guy reclining a doorway with a big pink handwritten sign that read “Need A Fat B*TCH”.
Classy.
He was yelling at passers by about being “poor” and “something something Trump” laced with profanities. Everybody just scurried past buried in phones or attending their doggie num nums. Truth you probably could’ve enjoyed a fine political chat with the guy but the rest of us are sick of the entitled junkie loser hobos.
How much is enough Ballard? Are people like Truth and the Caitlynnns and Calebs going to turn this neighborhood into another Crapitol Hill? Pathetic.
@Sockpuppet: I’m sorry you’re such a snowflake that a homeless man causes you uncontrollable tremors of whiny-ness. Maybe you should confront your parents for not exposing you to the real world? Seriously, my 95 year old grandma has seen more homeless people in her life than you can ever imagine. She would mock anybody that whines about the Ballard problem. She could probably also beat you at hand wrestling, especially with your teeny, tiny hands.
The great thing is that she would laugh and buy you a beer afterwards, if you could handle drinking with her.
Hey Truth, you know that the dreadlock’d registered sex offender with the giant goiter on his neck – you know, the one who loiters by the LIBRARY?
Yeah, why don’t you meditate on how attitudes like yours have allowed people like that to congregate and multiply in Ballard, instead of hurling lame “my grandma” insults at your taxpaying, business-operating neighbors. Yeah we’ve all been in the slums and – well dunno about you – we’ve all been in scraps. Namaste, god bless etc.
@Sockpuppet: So a dreadlocked, loitering sex offender causes you to wet your pants? You’d better not look up the local sex offender map then. There’s probably one living next door to you and you never knew.
“business-operating neighbors”
What business do you operate that allows you to gripe about the homeless 24/7 on a neighborhood blog? Are you hiring?
three words: public health hazard.
Great read to share.