Crosscut Media as offered the ultimate reference for the sick, wrong narrative that propels the political/activist/NGO machine that has created the homeless epidemics of Seattle and San Francisco. It is an erroneous narrative divorced from reality.
The truth is Seattle and San Fancisco are temperate cities with lots of services and law enforcement leniency for the homeless, and the visible homeless are not from these cities but rather vagabond drug addicts and mental cases from all over rural and suburban America. Seattle/San Francisco are destinations for the nation's homeless.
No matter how one feels about the homeless and the addicted - on a regional policy level - creating the beacon of services and leniency for the whole nation of vagabonds to migrate to creates an untenable, unsolvable problem.
My bus route serves a major addiction services methadone clinic (I support these clinics, no negative connotation intended). I've ridden the bus with hundreds of these patients. From what I can tell, they are from rural and suburban places all over the country.
The software engineers making 150,000 are not the problem, and Chinese millionaires investing in highrise condos are not either. They have made the city prettier. Those who have gotten priced out of the city have moved to bedroom communities from White Center to Tacoma. I personally have many long time friends who have made the move to a home or apartment further out in the Seattle metro, including myself. I have absolutely no friends that were priced out of their Seattle residence and are now an addict living in a tent or RV in the city...absolutely none.
A word about the software engineers making an average of 150K annual salary, and the high tech, high rise offices that have increased in the city. I love the city this transformation has created. No matter my own status, I love the city Amazon and other tech giants have helped create. This is the very kind of city I want to experience.
The only cancer this city has is the narrative politicians and activists subscribe to and serve -the narrative of the software engineer pushing the lower middle class towards substance abuse and homelessness.
I'm tired of accomodating that cancer, and the voices that spread it.
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