Seattle Public Utilities has just released a new video about collecting sharps, in which a Ballard resident is featured picking up sharps in Ballard Commons Park.
Ballard resident Jody Grage is featured in the short video. “I think one of the reasons for the sharps program is people are very anxious when they see needles,” Grage says in the video. “Needles are dangerous for people and pets, and they’re a very visible symbol of some of the dysfunctional aspects of what we’re going through right now.”
The video explains how to use the Find It, Fix It app for reporting needles, and also details safe ways for picking up sharps. They recommend wearing gloves, using tongs, and placing the sharp in a hard plastic container with the point facing down. They can then be dropped in one of nine drop-off locations in Seattle. The closest drop-off to Ballard is Fremont Canal Park (199 N Canal St).
SPU says since the collection program started in 2016, over 9,600 syringes have been collected, and more than 80,000 needles disposed of in the city’s drop-off boxes since February 2017. In 2018, 50,000 needles, syringes, and lancets have been collected.
For more about the city’s sharps collection program, click here.
This should make for some interesting and colorful conversation. Please keep it civil people.
I guess I shouldn’t have added the keep it civil part.
This is an abomination of the highest magnitude; we don’t need ‘needle programs’ what wen need is ‘law enforcement’. This is a shameful use of city resources; to continue to enable drug dealers (yes, many addicts are also dealers!) rather than address their dangerous and violent behavior. The public is not on the hook to clean up the potentially lethal mess left by these felons and it’s shameful that My Ballard promotes this propaganda. ‘Addicts’ directly support drug cartels who also do wonderful things like human trafficking. But hey; let’s treat this as a problem like people who don’t pickup their dog poop!
Do you expect the junkies to clean up after themselves? If they were socially responsible people, they wouldn’t be junkies leaving trash around in the first place. Ergo, citizens have to clean up after these ‘adults’ who act more like children than adults.
Sure must be alot of junkies and their advocates on this forum, with all the negative votes, critical of a truism about all the garbage drug users leave for the rest of us to pick up.
You think? How dare they! Clicking buttons in YOUR forum, like they were PEOPLE or something.
Of course the voting pattern is pretty consistent with the drubbing received by the nimbys at the real polls: Harley, Weatbrook, Scott Lindsey… the list goes on. The unpopularity of the nimby-hater faction seems to be accurately reflected by the negative rejection you guys get here in these fake toy polls every day. If two thirds of District 6 voted for Mike O’Brien, why wouldn’t two thirds of the readers here find your paranoia and fascist police state ideas offensive? No surprise there.
Or maybe it really IS a bunch of homeless and junkies, going around acting like they have the same right to an opinion as you. So uppity! Don’t they know their place!
Unpopular comment. I guess the truth is a hard pill to swallow.
“They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
Carl Sagan
I’m disturbed by the warm and fuzzy, feel-good tone of the video and the fact that the city thinks it’s appropriate to encourage citizens to go around picking up needles instead of focusing on solutions to the problem (i.e., expanding drug treatment and addressing the large numbers of people who are addicted and living on the streets). Jody Grage and others might feel good about thinking that they’re doing something to help, but the focus on picking up needles, rather than pushing elected officials for treatment on demand for every person who needs it, just enables and further normalizes a very serious problem.
Oh please. As if Jody does this so that she feels good.
People like you that complain incessantly about the problem but do nothing to address it make this a less desirable community.
You think government is like a vending machine and you’re behaving like a pouty child who’s mad because you stuck a dollar in the machine and your snickers didn’t come out.
I truly appreciate what these people are doing but the video, with its massage parlor music, leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling that the city is normalizing all this. “It’s not a big deal,” says Gage. Well, yeah, it really is.
F”%k the city for encouraging the non-drug addled citizens to clean up after the ones responsible for the mess. I’m tired of tolerating this scourge, and I’m sick of the city inviting the vermin to nest here.
But the people in the video looked so happy to be picking up dirty needles….
Clearly the junkies have no commitment to the well being of our pets and children. This is just a way the city is saying we care, so, here is the garbage can now clean it up! Am I now supposed to put rubber gloves and tongs in my purse to clean up the parks!! What about the guy in the white van who is sitting on 57th and 22nd selling drugs to these people!
And now that the tents are going back up in the commons there will be more garbage and needles!! Love the screaming and fighting at 2:00 in the morning!! Seattle needs to clean this up not my tongs!
No, no, no, K west. These are Elenchos’ friends, and they are valued “vulnerable community members” who are “experiencing homelessness.” We cant possibly suggest they dispose of their needles properly, or to stop screaming and fighting, they’re completely helpless and incapable of behaving otherwise.
Such outrage! More evidence that the nimbys, the haters at SS, and Harley & Dave’s other slactivist meetup groups, are totally opposed to any and all solutions. They pick apart this program and that program yet never advocate anything of their own, because they don’t want to help, and don’t want to address any problem. They are the do-nothing faction. Except for wanting high speed gondolas for some damn reason. High speed gondolas. Don’t ask.
The only think they want is police brutality. They imagine with enough official terror they can sweep their inconveniences into somebody else’s back yard. Selfish, short sighted, and self-defeating.
Having citizens go around picking up needles is NOT a solution. It’s a band-aid on a growing crisis that our city’s failed policies have created.
Here’s what I’m advocating for: expanded substance abuse and mental health treatment, stepped up enforcement and zero tolerance for people who camp illegally and refuse services. What are your solutions?
And you’re going to get money for all that where? Raise property taxes? We tried to make Amazon pay a bit and you guys went to work for Jeff Bezos to save him 0.0001% of his profits. Now any new programs you want are going to come out of your property taxes, or your sales taxes. Good one.
Zero tolerance? As in arrest a ton of people? And jail them? And you’re going to pay to house all these people in jail with what money…? Higher property taxes and sales taxes?
You know none of that will happen. So here you sit. Objecting to everything, sabotaging everything.
Is Mike O’Brien (or any city councilmember) down in Olympia lobbying state lawmakers to fund expanded treatment? No, they’re too busy banning straws, sticking their nose in to Tacoma’s affairs and trying to change the world. That’s where I would start, with a focused effort to lobby state lawmakers to fund expanded treatment. The city isn’t even trying to do that. I would also redirect the millions of dollars the city wants to spend on injection sites toward treatment. That would help tremendously.
The opioid epidemid has nothing to do with Amazon. Stop making Amazon the enemy.
I’m not “objecting to everything.” But having citizens running around picking up needles does zero to solve the problems our city is facing.
Lobbying! If only O’Brien would lobby more!
Yeah, if only there had been enough lobbying, the cash would have fallen from heaven. What makes you think Olympia has all this money sitting around to spend on this stuff? Where do you think they’ll get the money from? Property taxes and sales taxes, same as everything in Washington. They’re not going to tax Wenatchee and Yakima. They don’t have much of anything to tax, any way you slice it.
Why do you think Mike O’Brien has all this clout to make it rain in Olympia? You think he walks in and the whole state leg just opens up their wallets and starts throwing dollars at Seattle? Why?
But even if they did… Olympia wants to finance mental health treatment or jails or anything else, it means higher property taxes and sales taxes in Seattle. Until we get an income tax, or a head tax, that’s it.
Amazon isn’t anybody’s enemy. Sawant says that; I don’t. But Amazon pays hardly any taxes. We all know they can afford to pay more, and we all know we can’t raise property or sales taxes any higher. Simple.
You have this idea that there’s free money out there. Whose taxes are you going to raise? Nobody? Then you have no solutions.
Excuses and rationalizations. The city could trim its budget and find other ways to expand addiction treatment (for example, lobbying the state to change laws so that more doctors can prescribe buprenorphine or working to change the criminal justice system so inmates get treatment while they’re in jail).
Mike O’Brien and the rest of the council have shown absolutely no ability to think outside the box or come up with any innovative solutions to address homelessness and addiction. Instead, they allow the advocates and service providers that they’re beholden to dictate policy and funding decisions. It’s been that way for years, and that has led directly to the current mess.
And yes, they could be lobbying at the state level. They’re not even trying. Their only solution is more, more, more money, when they’ve failed to effectively spend the millions already being allocated to homelessness. That’s why people rejected the head tax. They’re tired of being asked for more money while the problems just continue to worsen.
I agree about the need for an income tax, but this council has shown that no amount of money thrown at the problem is going to solve it unless it’s spent effectively. And until they can do that, they don’t deserve another dime. They are completely incompetent. There’s plenty of money being spent; it’s just not being spent effectively.
So what are your solutions?
Lobbying the state for money is not “thinking outside the box”. Lobbying the state or the feds for “free” money is pretty much the oldest idea ever.
It’s weird that you think O’Brien or anybody else has all this lobbying power. Can you point to an example of any city council or mayor in the state who has marched down to Olympia and come back with millions of dollars for their pet projects? Where do you think the state is getting all this money you imagine is out there just waiting for Mike O’Brien to come ask for it?
Why do you think it’s a city council responsibility to go to other agencies to represent the city? Isn’t that why we have a mayor? Do you think Seattle sould send all 9 city council members down there, all asking for 9 different things? Or perhaps we should have an executive that can speak for the city with one voice?
Hey, what do you know! In 2017, Ed Murray lobbied the leg all session for housing funds. In 2016, Murray lobbied for… housing! Before that? Same. Go to pdc.wa.gov and browse the paid lobbyists in Olympia from 2018 back to the beginning of time.
The city consistently employs 4 to 6 lobbying firms. You’ll probably notice that all the other cites, and everybody else and their brother, also has lobbyists down there, also asking for money. Guess everybody is “thinking outside the box”!
Give me a break. It’s always more money for housing or some other warm and fuzzy program with you people. You enablers and the city refuse to acknowledge that for the vast majority of vagrants tenting it in our public spaces, it is an ADDICTION problem, and not a housing affordability problem.
The “President” of Ballard was living on the streets back during the crash of 2008, when housing prices took a tumble. Even if the city were somehow able to wave a magic wand and cut prices down to a fraction of what they are today, we’d still have vagrants camping and trashing our city, because we never tell them “No.”
You think because houses going for $500k in 2007 plummeted to $450k in 2008, everybody could afford housing? Figures.
You’ll always think this way. You are convinced life is fair. That’s why you think helping people is “enabling”. The fact that they need help is proof in your mind that they are bad people. It’s why you all rushed to save Jeff Bezos from paying a tiny sliver of his billions in taxes. You think Bezos is a billion times better person than anybody else because how else could he have gotten so rich? He MUST be a great man, because life IS fair.
In your mind, taxing the rich is punishment for being superior men. You think like a six year old.
Life is not fair, babies.
On the contrary, I understand life isn’t fair. Every parent worth their salt teaches their kids that. Apparently yours did not.
And letting vagrants camping in their own filth is enabling them. But it sure as hell isn’t “helping” them.
Lip service. You *think* you know life isn’t fair.
But be honest: when you see a guy living in a box, or begging, or with all his belongings in a car, do you need to ask any more? You know everything you need to. You KNOW he’s a screw up. You KNOW that he’s on drugs, or crazy, or a criminal, or something. You KNOW he must have earned it. It doesn’t cross your mind for one second that a person could end up in that state without bringing it on themselves somehow.
Right? Isn’t that true? You post every day saying that. You can give lip service to the “life is not fair kids!” platitudes, but the fact is, you think people get exactly what they deserve.
You don’t like taxing the rich and you don’t like helping the poor because of one simple thing: you think life is fair, same as any six year old.
LOL A privileged idiot.
I didn’t say that lobbying Olympia was thinking outside the box. I did, however, suggest two concrete things the city could be looking at to expand addiction treatment. And I’m just a private citizen thinking off the top of my head. There is no imagination or innovative thinking from city council, which is happy to take its cues on policy and funding decisions from the providers who directly benefit from those policies. Spending on homlessness has increased something like 40 percent over the past five years, yet the problem is worse than ever. Seattle spends among the highest amounts in the country on homelessness and has the third highest number of homeless people nationwide. That should tell you that what we’ve been doing clearly is not working. THAT’s why there was a revolt against the head tax.
Again, what are your solutions, besides continuing to defend the same failed policies and inept leaders like O’Brien? I’m hearing nothing in the way of solutions from you, just trolling and kneejerk rhetoric.
Another thing the council could and should have done is work on a regional approach for funding and services. Durkan and Constantine had agreed to do that when, in their rabid zeal to “tax the rich,” the council shoved through the head tax, which spectacularly backfired and also derailed the regional talks that were already underway. They are completely inept.
Why do you think it’s the city’s job to represent us on the King County Council? We HAVE a representative there. Her name is Jeanne Kohl-Welles. Kohl-Welles is the one you should be complaining about for not enough regional solutions. Although, again, with WHAT money? The county can’t do anything but raise your property taxes and sales taxes.
State solutions? Want the state to do something? Your representatives are Noel Frame and Gael Tarleton. Mike O’Brien isn’t your representative in Olympia. State Senator? That would be Reuven Carlyle, not Mike O’Brien.
You have a weird obsession with Mike O’Brien. If he’s all you care about, at least stop and try to figure out what his actual job is.
It’s pointless conversing with you, since you are obviously just interested in trolling, defending the city’s failures of leadership and slamming anyone who offers an opinion different than yours. I’m quite clear on what the job of city council is, and this council has completely failed to address homelessness and is not fulfilling its basic responsibility to uphold public safety.
Mike O’Brien isn’t even on the public safety committee, and hasn’t been in his years on the Council. You’d think you’d focus your criticism on the City Council members who directly influence public safety, not to mention the ones ACTUALLY in charge of the police, namely the mayor and the police chief. You never mention them.
If you want something from Olympia, contact YOUR REPRESENTATIVES IN OLYMPIA. Want something from the King County Council? Contact YOUR REPRESENTATIVE on the King County Council.
I would really like you to tell me whose money you think you’ll be spending if you get what you want from the state or the county. They get their tax revenues from exactly the same place as the city: from you.
Seriously, learn some basic civics. I can see why someone who has no idea how the government works is frustrated and angry.
If you think council members have no responsibility for or ability to influence public safety in the city, you clearly have no clue about how city government functions. Mike O’Brien’s proposal to allow camping on public property throughout the city would have had a direct impact on public safety. O’Brien was also one of the leaders in the opposition to building a new North Precinct and has been influential in opposing a split of the North Precinct, which also has an impact on public safety.
The city council provides oversight to the police department and public safety issues; they can pass laws, and they approve the public safety budget. So to say that the mayor and police chief are the only ones influencing public safety is just wrong.
Again, what are your solutions? You’ve proposed none so far.
“No responsibility”? What? Sure, the council could shoot a letter down to Olympia. But Seattle has SEVERAL full time lobbyists in Olympia. The council can help instruct them, rather then go down and do their job for them. It’s also why the council doesn’t drive around filling in potholes.
And 9 different council members speaking for the city is stupid. The mayor speaks for the city, with one voice. And the lobbyists work for her. We have an orderly system. You’re demanding a gaggle running around being annoying in the hopes that they’ll throw money at us.
Speaking of money, WHAT money? Who do you think gets taxed with all this free money from Olympia? Who?
You want the council to provide oversight. Who controls the SPD?
1. The chief of police, who works directly for…
2. The Mayor, who is advised by, and receives a budget from…
3. The Public Safety Committed, which sets the agenda for..
4. The Council’s decisions on public safety
As only one of 9 council members, O’Brien is certainly one part of this. But he ranks far, far down on the list of doors you should be knocking on if you are unhappy with public safety. Just like the first people you should call if you want money from Olympia are Reuven Carlyle, Noel Frame and Gael Tarleton. They’re IN the legislature, and it’s their actual job to represent you there.
I’ve told you I don’t believe in “solutions” from Seattle. Seattle didn’t cause the massive inequality that has plagued the entire country for 40 years. Seattle can’t solve Washington’s regressive taxation.
Seattle can build more housing, but that is primarily a battle with nimbys over zoning. Nimbys are immensely good at making sure nothing every changes.
Beyond that, all we can do is help make a bad situation less bad. Services to people in crisis are not a magic cure. They’re there to help those in need. You’re wrong to complain that emergency services have failed to put an end to homelessness.
WHAT MONEY do you think Olympia is going to give us? WHOSE taxes will go up to get that money? I think you know it’s the same as if Seattle just raised taxes ourselves. What you like is the fact that it’s much harder to get the whole state to support something than it is to get 5 of 9 council members to support it. NIMBYs want the status quo, they want nothing to happen. Best way to ensure nothing happens is to increase the number of people who have to all agree.
Same old do-nothing SS, SOS, nimbys and fascist haters. You only want to make people suffer more in the hopes that they’ll disappear somehow.
I’m a grownup who doesn’t expect the world to be like a Disney movie. Why should the problem improve when the cause hasn’t changed? The housing shortage has only gotten worse, as the influx of high paid workers has only increased, and housing construction has never kept pace, let alone ever made of for the shortfall created over the last 20 years.
Have you compared Seattle’s homelessness problem with other cities that have grown by 30% while housing increased by less than 20%? How many cities do you know of that went from from 536,000 to 725,000 from 1998 to 2018? How many of them failed to build housing at the same rate as their growth? Seattle is kind of special in that respect.
You’re comparing Seattle with cities that never had this housing shortage to begin with.
Seattle’s nimbys won’t let zoning change to allow us to even begin to address the housing shortage. Jeff Bezos’s lackeys won’t let us tax the wealthy, so we remain the the #1 most regressively taxed city in the country. Why should we expect anything but attempts to make a terrible situation slightly less terrible?
Maybe Democratic control will allow Washington to finally have income tax. Seattle could remove the sales tax burden from the poor, and the property tax burden from everyone, and finally ask the rich to pay the same as they do in any normal city. Even then, it will take 20 years to make up for the shortfall in housing built up over the last two decades.
Until then, no solutions. Only treading water. Trying to lessen the suffering as best we can. Fascists preaching cruelty and sweeping people out of our sight are the typical parasites attracted to any crisis. Times get tough and the jackbooted brownshirts start demanding all the defective and inferior people be marched off somewhere.
What do you suggest be trimmed and exactly how much would your ideas save?
Elenchos, it’s spelled Nnimby: No Needles In My Backyard.
And yes, the solution is to use our police the way they’re meant to be used. To enforce the law, discourage camping, and arrest criminals. In other words, make Ballard and Seattle unwelcoming to undesirables, instead of the anything goes free-for-all it is today. That’s not police brutality, it’s common sense and good governance.
The evidence says they didn’t come here from somewhere else. They’re from here. You lunatics assert — based on no evidence — that they all migrated here to get Seattle’s supposedly generous services, but asserting something out of thin air with no evidence doesn’t make it true.
You want to push our problems over the city limits into Burien or Kirkland or Renton? Bellevue? Like they won’t notice? What do you think they’ll do? Push them right back? Why wouldn’t they?
And arrest people. You won’t pay to house them but you’ll pay to jail them. With higher property taxes and sales taxes? Will that pass? No. It ain’t happening so shut up. We almost taxed Amazon to pay for things, but you guys served Jeff Bezos real good and put a stop to that. Loyal lapdogs.
Fascists always think utopia is right around the corner if only we could get rid of the right people. Gas this group. Put that group in reeducation camps. Cleanse this other class out of sight. Stalin thought that. Pol Pot thought that. Same old same old.
They’re our people and we don’t get to pawn them off on somebody else. Grown ups face their problems, not hide them and hope mommy doesn’t see. As long as we live in one of the most unequal societies the world has seen since the Gilded Age, there will be crushing poverty. That means the adults in the room have messes to clean up.
Actually, you’re the only one here slagging off whole groups of people. If you’d stop blowing steam long enough, you’d see that while you may disagree with N’OBrien, they are not frothing at the mouth quite as much as you do. Your condescension and self-righteousness doesn’t do you any favors; it blinds you to working with people who also want to get people housing/treatment, but nooooo…they don’t want to do it EXACTLY THE WAY YOU DO. So…stuff ’em. Missed opportunity.
Working? You work? What work, exactly, am I not doing *with* you?
What work would I do with SS? Or Harley or David or those guys who spend all day stalking and doxxing journalists? They have no agenda to do anything. They have no plan for paying for all the jail cells they want to fill and no plan for paying for all this mental health and drug treatment they imagine.
They only time they ever went to work was when Jeff Bezos wanted foot soldiers to fight off a little tax he didn’t want to pay. I wasn’t on board to work with them on that.
Let me know next time the nimbys are doing any “work”. I’m waiting.
Seriously- why isn’t jailing the druggie bums a solution? Better for them to get locked up and kept away from the drugs than given public resources and continue to use?
If they are camping illegally, search them and if they have drugs, lock them up.
Seems pretty straight forward solution.
Jail isn’t free. You pay for jail. Jail is housing and food. In addition to paying for housing and food, you pay for courts, and jailers. They’re well paid, with your money.
Most expensive, biggest government, highest tax “solution”.
And when they get out? Right back where we started. You spent the most money you possibly could and arrived right where you began.
Also: drug addiction is not a crime. Courts ruled on that. Poverty is not a crime. Homelessness is not a crime. Fake Nextdoor crime reports don’t count. You’ll be paying even more in damages if you send the cops out to trump up fake charges to try to jail people illegally.
All comes out of your pocket.
I would be perfectly happy with that. Put them in jail, essentially mandatory detox, get them the skills they need through rehabilitation, then when they are released they have a better chance to succeed than they did before.
I would be interested in seeing the statistics behind something like that.
Heck, 2 or 3 days in jail would do wonders. It would be just long enough to let them get violently dope sick. Let them suffer that punishment for a few days. A couple of those “treatments,” and maybe they will rethink Seattle’s allure.
You’d first need to pass a constitutional amendment before you can punish people for not being housed. Good luck with that.
You guys don’t care how inefficient and expensive it is. All you care about is whether or not the class you despise is punished with maximum cruelty. Expensive courts, police, jails and jailers are no problem because it causes them pain.
You hate all the cheaper approaches because they don’t blame the poor for being poor, and they don’t intentionally try to cause them suffering. This delusion that they will all go “away” is classic fascistic thinking. If only we could make the inconvenient people disappear, all would be well.
You don’t get to just erase people because you dislike them.
“You’d first need to pass a constitutional amendment before you can punish people for not being housed.”
Where in my comment, or for that matter any of my comics that I say we should “punish people for not being housed?” Be specific. Go ahead I’ll wait.
That’s all you ever do. You convict people in your mind and yell for them to be behind bars just by looking at them.
Just by looking at them, you can tell that they must have done something wrong. You think life is fair, and anybody who looks like they are in need must have done something to deserve it. That’s why you’re so comfortable demanding they be punished, and so quick to defend the rich from any more taxes.
Just as I said, you can’t find a single comment of mine where I said people should be punished for not being housed. Thst makes you f.o.s., Elenchos. Not feeling quite so smug and clever now, are you. I won’t ask for an apology from you, because I know you’re just soooo much more righteous than I will ever be. But that’s OK, watching you obfuscate and deflect yet again is satisfaction enough for me.
Okaaaaaay, you asked for it. Keep in mind these are only a few recent examples when you posted with your “hayduke” sock puppet screen name. You have a dozen other screen names, but you’ll deny it, even though we all keep telling you we can tell it’s you. We SEE YOU. You are not clever enough to hide it. But we’ve been over that already. Here:
Quoting me: “drug addiction is not a crime.”
You said: “How do you think they get the money to get their drugs? Is stealing a crime?”
See: 2018/08/24 ballard-commons-featured-in-citys-sharps-collection-video #comment-588048
“Let them suffer that punishment for a few days.”
See: 2018/08/24 ballard-commons-featured-in-citys-sharps-collection-video/ #comment-588045
Punishment for what? For being homeless? Or being addicted to drugs? Neither is a crime.
…
“the solution is to use our police the way they’re meant to be used. To enforce the law, discourage camping, and arrest criminals. In other words, make Ballard and Seattle unwelcoming to undesirables”
See: 2018/08/24 ballard-commons-featured-in-citys-sharps-collection-video #comment-587995
Being “undesirable” is not a crime. Using the police to harass “undesirables” is a crime.
See: 2018/08/20 incident-in-ballard-injures-police-officer #comment-587824
And: 2018/08/20 incident-in-ballard-injures-police-officer #comment-587852
^^^ Here is where you (twice) assume a person in “crisis” (you’re whining drugs, mental illness, exposure) is a criminal.
See: 2018/08/08 summer-events-create-concern-over-cleanliness-of-ballard-commons-park #comment-587348
Someone (probably your sock) calls for “junkies” to be “swept” (cleansed, pogromed, some kind of Final Solution), and they say “I will always be a proud NIMBY when it comes to criminal activity.” You criticize the downvotes as the “the hug-a-thug crowd”. Drug addicts are not criminals, because drug addition is NOT a crime. Drug addicts are NOT “thugs”. But you have said, many many many times, that they are.
…
I hope I don’t have to also post 500 quotes of you saying that the main cause of homelessness is drug addition. You equate homeless with “junkie” and you equate “junkie” with “thug”, “criminal”. You never shut up about it. Scroll up a littlie in this thread, you said, “it is an ADDICTION problem, and not a housing affordability problem.” You deny the existence of the huuuuuuuuge housing imbalance and population change that has been the top news story in Seattle for two decades.
Finally, this one is CLASSIC. You think we can afford to jail 12,000 people (court costs, plus room, plus board, plus medical, plus cells, plus guards) but we *can’t* afford to give the same 12,000 people *just* room: See: 2018/08/17 48-unit-ballard-apartment-building-sells-for-10-9m #comment-587796
Sheesh, Elenchos, I’m disappointed. I thought you could do better than that. Once again, you misrepresent and take quotes out of context, when it’s so easy to prove otherwise. So for the rest of you who are still reading this thread, here’s the context:
“You enablers and the city refuse to acknowledge that for the vast majority of vagrants tenting it in our public spaces, it is an ADDICTION problem, and not a housing affordability problem.”
See how Elenchos conveniently left out my quote specifying that I’m not referring to all homeless, but only to “vagrants tenting it in our public spaces?” Elenchos, have you ever considered the possibility that it’s insulting to those who are not homeless by choice, but who are working their butts off to exit homelessness, to equate them with a bunch of thieving druggies?
And btw, I’m dying to know the names of my “sock puppets.” Please enlighten me.
Everyone can read your words for themselves. You can deny it says what it says, but they can think for themselves. Nobody needs me to tell them you said it.
“Vagrancy” is not a crime. Camping is not a crime when you have no where else to go. You believe in criminalizing it because you’re hoping to make it too miserable for unhoused people to exist here at all. NOT because they are criminals, but because you can’t stand the sight of them. By constantly harassing them, you think they’ll pack up and bother somebody else. Classic fascism: get rid of the inconvenient people.
I’ve posted lists of sockpuppets before, shown evidence for why we now they’re socks. Others have done the same. It doesn’t get through to you. Everyone can see it for themselves. Have you not noticed you’re kind of unpopular?
Jeff, really? It costs *so much* to force this problem to the criminal justice system, when other sorts of remediation (including housing first programs) are shown to be more effective and cheaper in the long run. I’m a millennial homeowner (got lucky with the last affordable fixer upper in Ballard a few years back) but the escalating property taxes have been resulting in a very real impact on my budget; I’m always two paychecks away from serious financial devastation. I’m much more in favor of solutions that are compassionate and proven effective, and finding more equitable taxation of Seattle’s citizens. I don’t know why you think that jail is at all an effective idea.
“drug addiction is not a crime.”
How do you think they get the money to get their drugs? Is stealing a crime? Do you believe they should be punished at all for it? Should there be any jail time? Or is that just not compassionate enough for you?
If your fascist pals took power in Seattle, and then instructed the police to arrest addicts on the presumption that they must have stolen the money they used to buy the drugs, and then tried to prosecute them, the judges would laugh your fascist tool prosecutor out of the court. Lawyers would be lining up to sue the city for violation the suspects’ rights, and in addition to the millions you wasted on false arrests and false charges, you would cost us millions in damages. You’d bankrupt the city and have worse drug addition and homelessness than when you started.
You’d have every level of government office filled with a rube as dumb as Donald Trump.
Have you ever bothered to look up the numerous court cases based on the premise you describe, that people addicted to illegal drugs musts have done something illegal? There’s many examples. Try to find them. You’ll learn something.
You’re deflecting again. If the cops happen to catch someone stealing your bike or package or breaking into a car or home, should they be arrested? Should they be punished? Or do you believe drug addicts and vagrants should get a pass, because hey, they’re “homeless,” they cant help it! Nevermind that little constitutional problem with the 14th amendment.
Stop dodging the question and answer it.
I wasn’t dodging your question. I just misread your question as being semi-intelligent. I didn’t realize you had a misconception so inane.
You think that I want people who have been caught for a crime to be let go, just because they might also be on drugs or homeless? Why would you think that? Where did I ever say anything that implied that I would want to let anyone off for a crime because of the ancillary detail that they were addicted or unhoused?
Seriously, where did I ever say that? Can you quote me?
Of course anyone who has committed an actual offense should be held accountable, in an equitable way. They can’t look the other way for offenses by one race or class while throwing the book at one specific race or class of people. If they’re treating everyone the same, then of course, cite them or arrest them if they have broken an actual law.
Jail costs more than housing. Cough up son.
If you throw money out housing the problem just gets worse. But if you threw the criminals in jail at least the street would be slightly cleaner and safer.
The data from the plummeting nationwide crime rates over the period from the late 80s to the late 90s contradicts that. It’s true that cities that massively increased policing and incarcerated people saw huge declines in crime. But cities that did not do those things, and even cities that decreased policing and jailed fewer people, saw the same declines.
Those who pour resources into fighting crime yield the same results as those who don’t. The evidence shows crime rises and falls for reasons that have little to do with police and jails.
When you add in the blowback from giving police free reign, the sometimes staggering compensation paid out of your pocket for violations of anyone’s rights by police, this law & order approach is all the more counterproductive.
You idiot. Nice try at a deflect. Focus, elenchos.
Thank you Jody! What you’re doing is purely and truthfully “Harm Reduction”, a term which has been highjacked by official proponents of facilitated illegal heroin slamming. (Does any scientist believe that repeated injections of heroin and its adulterants isn’t harmful?)
Manufacturers of opiate and opioid pills are being sued because they allegedly knew their overproduction was facilitating illegal and dangerous abuse. Who manufactures all those needles and syringes? Are the needle exchange facilities actually exchanging, or just promiscuously giving them away? One can’t just go to Bartells for them, right?
Let’s acknowledge that when an addict CHOOSES to switch from smoking or snorting to slamming a line is being crossed, medically and legally. Jody’s work reduces the harm to the 99%+ who don’t slam drugs without enabling those who do or who are contemplating that switch. Would that Seattle’s government were so constructive!
Does anybody know who that tall guy with the big gray afro is? I’ve seen him around the area for years now. I see him around QFC in Ballard a lot. What’s his story?
Mr. President? He used to deal weed to the high schoolers. A fine example of the happy camping school of homelessness.
You guys are absolutely obsessed with that one black man. What you hate most about him is the way he goes on and on, existing.
So explain to me why he’s been “homeless” for at least ten years now, living out of his van next to the library? Lack of affordable housing?
Well, for one thing it’s a free country. Nobody owes you any explanation for what they do. For another thing, life is not fair.
Conservatives have the worst time with this. We all thought life was fair when we were six, but most of us grew up and realized that bad things happen to good people. People don’t always get exactly what they deserve. Hard work and honestly can pay off, and they can also result in suffering and deprivation. Fair? No. But that’s really how it works.
No conservative will ever wrap their mind around this. They see a person in a bad situation, and they will always, always, always, always say it’s because it’s their fault. They must have done terrible things to bring that on themselves.
Lack of affordable housing? Um, yes? Maybe you didn’t hear? The population increase by 30% in the last 20 years, and the housing stock increased by maybe 19%? And virtually all the new housing was high end catering to the massive influx of highly paid workers? Poor people were squeezed out. It’s a thing that happened.
In short:
1. None of your business.
2. Bad things do happen to good people.
3. Seattle has a housing shortage. It was in the news once or twice.
Also, the entire country has the worst inequality in a century, and it’s getting worse. Seattle didn’t create that, and Seattle can’t fix it. It’s part of the landscape now.
Someone from St. Luke’s who knows that man told me he’s been offered housing but has refused it, since he prefers to camp out in his van, taking up a free parking spot (actually two, since he also stores his decrepit blue car around the Commons as well) in a high-density area where parking is at a premium. He’s been doing this for more than a decade. He’s abusing a free resource that is meant for the public to use, not for him to monopolize for years on end.
TAKING UP FREE PARKING!!!! THE HUMANITY!!!
This man is a MONSTER! Taking up one of our precious, precious parking spaces. You people and your parking. I really wish you’d just come out and admit you think parking is a human right.
Anyways, some guy told you he chooses to live there. So let’s pretend it’s true, because you should always believe whatever some guy tells you about some other guy.
So what? It’s a free country. He is exercising his right to choose to live where he wants. If he’s a dastardly parking violator, go call the parking violations hotline, or use the easy website or phone app to report it.
Maybe you guys should run city council candidates on a platform of making parking violations a felony. Of course when will they have the time, what with them camping out full time in Olympia asking for handouts, which apparently is what you think a city council members job is. Run on that too: “Vote for me and you’ll never see me!”
You do realize we elect actual representatives and senators down there? Why send somebody else down there to stand outside the door asking the leg for money, when our OWN PEOPLE represent us right there IN the statehouse! Of course, everybody else is also represented, also all asking for money. Your ideas aren’t that original.
NO’Brien, then maybe you should advocate for the Ballard neighborhood to become zoned parking. Free parking is basically a huge subsidy to the cost of car ownership, and it makes sense to address it. Plus zoned parking would bring in more revenue to city from violators while providing an effective means to cut down on abuse of it.
MillBill, I would definitely be in favor of zoned parking. IIRC, the Central Ballard Residents Association pursued that idea a few years ago but it didn’t come to fruition for whatever reason.
good to know our local government has given up doing the basics of governing and letting us just wing it.
Thank you, Jody for caring about this community! And thank you, Marlo, for coming up with a solution that relies on volunteers to take care of a known problem. Nowhere in the video did it suggest that this sharps disposal program was replacing law enforcement efforts to cut down on public drug use. They’re not mutually exclusive. Also, it clearly stated that when you encounter a needle, you go through the app and report and someone trained comes and gets it. No one is asking people to randomly pick up needles. Did you detractors even watch the video or are you just going off of the description? As a parent, I applaud these efforts. The drug addiction/mental illness crisis Ballard is seeing isn’t going away overnight — and probably, unfortunately, not for a long while. In the meantime, what’s the problem with someone finding a decent solution to dealing with a very important public safety problem?
There aren’t really any “law enforcement efforts to cut down on public drug use” in Seattle. If you learn of some, please share here. The city has been following a strategy of unofficially decriminalizing illicit drug use.
Love the shit-eating grin at 4 min 42 sec as she holds up her container of drug addicts’ needles like a two year old getting a Furby for Christmas. The delusion is complete.
Me thinks that Elenchos has a ton of free time on his hands, judging by his 2000 words per-story rants that no one reads.
He must be a “regular working stiff”, a “man of the people” with so much leisure time.
So? Who cares?
Downvote this you fucks!