For over a year now, RVs belonging to the otherwise homeless have been parked along Northlake Way between Dunn Lumber and Westward. This has led to the accumulation of much trash (which the city tried to clean up in February, as we wrote about here), but also events such as fires.
Now, the RVs have apparently been moved out. A reader writes:
I am writing because I am cautiously optimistic that the public health nightmare that was the long line of parked RVs has been permanently cleared from N Northlake Way. I am politically progressive but became acutely aware of both the public health dangers of drug use (needles), trash, human feces and and increased crime occurring in the neighborhood when this extended encampment arrived.
I had regularly walked that strip between Dunn Lumber and Gas Works Park until the pandemic and the encroachment of these vehicles made in impassable and dangerous.
It appears that the cement blocks (see pics) installed by the city may be permanent which would be a huge relief.
That’s a sad life but it doesn’t give them an excuse to create mayhem.
Good riddance. That whole stretch has been a nonstop source of chop shops of cars and bikes, scenes of violence, fires, you name it. Now that the letter writer the article seems to understand the connection between feel-good progressive policies and the inevitable consequences of them, they will reconsider their voting habits.
And now all those same people will be doing all those same things, just at a different parking spot somewhere else in our neighborhood. Shuffling these people from one spot to another is apparently a higher-priority use of police resources than investigating sexual assaults. Seems backwards to me.
What did the residents and businesses on Northlake do to deserve having dozens of unstable criminals and methheads parked for the last year or two right by them? So the city should tell them, “So sorry, but until we’ve given them all a free home with no conditions, no skin in the game, you’re shit outa luck?” If these vagrants decide to set up camp on your block, you’re cool with letting them stay for as long as they like so they dont get shuffled somewhere else?
You can’t let these camps grow and fester. The bigger they get, the more violent and lawless they become. The criminals amongst them need to be imprisoned and the rest need to be forced to move. If they don’t like it, too bad. Accept the services we offer you. Sorry if it’s not waterfront housing on Green Lake though. Get a job and earn it like the rest of us.
Nobody’s actually arresting these folks though. If we had the budget to put them in prison, we’d also have the budget to put them in supportive housing or drug treatment or whatever it is that would actually help them get back on their feet. We don’t though, so we’re stuck with them camping in their RVs somewhere.
I’m not excited about the prospect of them setting up on my block, no. That’s why their prior location tucked into a hillside across from a boat storage facility seems like one of the less bad locations possible. Much better than a residential street.
Ah yes, pleases vote to reduce taxes on the rich, cut services for the poor, and support policies that increase inequity… that’ll surely solve the homeless problem! Fighting against housing policies that promote density to improve affordability while complaining about members of society who have been pushed to the margins is the solution! You’ve nailed it! Conservative policies fighting for the unbridled capitalism that got us here will save us!
It feels good that the city cares about its citizens, especially the ones who cannot afford a backyard.
That’s a sad life but it doesn’t give them an excuse to create mayhem.
I see the usual battle has been joined, between the forces of simple minded answers vs. the other forces of simple minded answers. What didn’t happen so much in the past, is all the “downvoting”. I wonder if that says anything about these times.
While it always sounded sort of logical, that if we force people to leave some area where they’ve been camping, they’ll just camp in another area … having heard Mike O’Brien make this argument, one always has to suspect that it may not really be true. And so far, the way it seems to me, I’m simply seeing fewer and smaller encampments. Is it true, or did they all end up in some massive Hooverville that I just haven’t stumbled across?
If it’s true, that’s really good news, isn’t it? Rife with narcotics trafficking, sexual exploitation, etc., they’re simply bad phenomena that we should be happy to be rid of, right?
“I am politically progressive but […]”
No, you hate poor people.
“I had regularly walked that strip between Dunn Lumber and Gas Works Park until the pandemic and the encroachment of these vehicles made in impassable and dangerous.”
I walk there, too. The people who have nowhere else to live are somehow in your way? Stop calling yourself progressive.
Let’s give people actual places to live.