I’ve known Luke for about five years now and have come to appreciate his quiet demeanor. He often stands out from the hustle and bustle of Broadway because of his shy nature. Luke doesn’t keep a lot of friends but considers Rick, the person he’s with tonight, his closest ally. Smiling and in a soft tone he reveals “I feel safer and happier being around him. He’s my best friend.” Rick acknowledges the compliment with a big smile and friendly nod.
“I was born in Arizona in 1978 and grew up there with my family. I lived in Germany for about 3 years but consider Seattle my home now. I’ve lived here for about 15 years and most of them homeless on Capitol Hill. Sometimes I wish I could get off the streets because it can get rough, but I do enjoy the freedom. I have family in Tucson, a brother and sister that I talk to sometimes but I don’t miss them too much. I guess they miss me, though. My street friends and Rick especially – they are my family now and we look out for each other. At least we try, you know? We fight, we argue but we always come back for each other in the end because nobody else will.”
Luke is up front about his drug use and the impact it’s had on his life.
“My drug of choice is heroin but it used to be meth. I really wish I hadn’t done either. I wanted to be a doctor but lost my self esteem when I started using. It’s horrible being addicted especially being dope sick (withdrawals). Your eyes water, bones ache, stomach hurts, muscles tighten and spasm…runny nose, diarrhea. It doesn’t even get me high anymore, actually, it just takes the pain away and helps me feel normal.”
I asked him what he thought about Capitol Hill.
“I like it but most people think the homeless are addicts and that isn’t true. I am, but I don’t like being judged on that alone. A lot of people out here are homeless for reasons beyond their control – other than drugs. I wish I had never done drugs to be honest. I’ve been in and out of treatment and jail several times but it didn’t work and here I am again. It doesn’t make me bad person, though.”
His advice for others was simple:
“Don’t do drugs, especially meth because it will lead you to heroin. You’ll wind up an addict and on the streets like me. It’s a shit-hole out here and here is where you will die – alone.”
Somber words he hopes others will hear.
With that, the two gather up their belongings and ready themselves for another night on the streets of Hill. “I’m happy to do this interview,” Luke says as he shakes my hand. “To think about my life and whether it’s time for change was a good thing I haven’t done in a long while. Thank you.” Kind words indeed, and ones that could well serve me in the future. Thank you, Luke.
Luke seems like a decent guy, with a very serious addiction problem. But he is a good example of why I don’t give money to panhandlers….more often than not the cash goes to buy drugs or alcohol…..so I would feel like I am enabling them in their addictions instead of helping them.
A common refrain from street people, as Luke says, is that they “enjoy the freedom ” of the streets. I really don’t understand that a hard life outdoors, with the constant need to obtain drugs/alcohol/food/shelter is any kind of freedom. In fact, it seems quite the opposite.
The question then leads to, if you are empathetic to their cause, then what are you doing to help them? If you are fortunate, then you can help. I’ve been homeless, it was for a decade. You know which people impacted me more? Not the people who just gave me money, but the people who had a conversation with me, and treated me like a human being. Acknowledgment means a lot more then money. Just showing that you care can have a profound impact on your life or someone else’s.
I feel empathy for addicts and the homeless in general. It just seems like most of them are not from here. I’m all for helping local families in need but I find it bothersome that Seattle entices these folks to “relocate” here. Seattle is known for it’s homeless programs and the amount of tax money spent to eradicate the problem. Clearly it’s not working. Every nook and cranny is filled with trash, human waste, drug paraphernalia, tents and tarps. Super aggressive panhandling. You can build a million tent cities and they will fill up, but it won’t make a dent in the amount of people on the street that prefer their “freedom”.
Now that you put it that way, I realize that what street people mean when they talk about their freedom is that they are free to use drugs/alcohol when they want to, without any restrictions. They often cite the bad conditions in shelters as the reason they don’t use them, but I think that’s a red herring…the real reason is that the shelters (and tent cities) prohibit the use of their favorite substances.
As a former Broadway street kid I can tell you that tent cities are full of drugs and the reason that I never stayed in a shelter is because scabies and lice are often run rampant through these institutions. The freedom spoken of is not just to do drugs, in fact its much easier to do drugs when not living on the street, it’s freedom from being fake, freedom from the drudgery of going to a job you hate everyday. It’s hard on the streets but I don’t regret the time I spent there, it taught life lessons that could be learned no where else
Tim,
thanks for the images and the stories – I admire your relationships with the street people of Capitol Hill. Yes, individuals want their ‘freedom’, but that need for ‘freedom’ is driven by illness: addictions and mental illness, often a ‘dual diagnosis’, with complicated interaction: the addiction and the mental illness – we need compassion for these folks, and better systems for treating and housing them.
nice piece
Sadly, some people can’t beat the disease of addiction even with many attempts at rehab, counseling etc. I don’t see this as a moral failing on their part anymore than I would of someone who doesn’t “beat” cancer or mental illness. Sometimes the illness has the upper hand. Diseases are complex. Therefore, sometimes I do give money to people on the street, just to show them a little human kindness. Who knows, maybe they use the money to buy a cup of coffee on a rainy day. Maybe they use it for drugs. I don’t judge. It’s a hard life on the street. Not everyone can beat the disease of addiction.
This was interesting to read Luke’s story. I’ve had many encounters with him over the years. Most have been shooshing him away from my building’s side door because he’s shooting up. (Though my first encounter with him was when I found him masterbating at the back door of my old building; he was so loaded and refusing to stop even though I was shouting at him like a crazy person.) Once I shooshed him off in the middle of the night, during a cold winter night. He had been shooting, but I still felt terrible doing it because where else was he supposed to go? But the guys that shoot up there leave dirty needles; they also pee and poop there too. But again, where else are they supposed to go? I don’t know if there are answers.
Yep, know him well as well, used to pay him regularily to clean up around the dumpsters in our ally thinking maybe this psudo job might make getting a really one seem like more of a possiblity, and he’d always do a better job than anyone. He’d get into our building all the time, but never stole or wrecked anything. Now that he’s changed over to heroin at least there’s a chance for a normal life with methadone et al. I’ve heard of other cities with programs funded by local business for street people like this to paint over the grafitti and keep the trash picked up. Seems like something that would be good to get started here…
Thanks for the article.
A fine and empathetic piece but, frankly, we have too many Lukes in the neighborhood who do what the previous poster mentioned — leave dirty needles on the ground, urinate and defecate on our streets and, when they can get into building, do all of the above in our stairwells. Many of them also assault people and break into homes. They have to go. We, the good people of Capitol Hill (in all of our liberal glory) need to say enough is enough. He mentioned that all of his drug use and all of his criminal history don’t make him a bad person. Well, when he takes a dump in my hallway, in my book, it does.
Please don’t include me in your “we”. I’ve never had any problem with the drug addicts or homeless people in the neighborhood in the 20 years I’ve lived here. But, the misogynist control freaks in my condo association are some of the most evil people I’ve ever met. Can we get rid of them?
You’re excused.
You can definitely include ME in that WE. My house was broken into, trashed and ransacked by druggies, and it destroyed my life for at least a year. I think they’re all convicted felons. I won’t say whether they’re bad people or not, but they’ve done really bad things – and that’s about the same in my book.
Compassion, yes. But that ends the moment you commit a crime.
Indeed, Eli. If you read today’s Seattle Times you’ll see that Washington is #1 out of all 50 states in property crimes. Our Mayor is weak and our new Chief of Police is, well, ‘ineffective’ seems like a charitable word.
Didn’t mean to say ‘today’s’ Seattle Times (article was from Nov. 14.
Except not all druggies are homeless, whoever broke into your house could easily have had a house and everything just like you. Don’t punish all for the act of some. Assuming that their all a certain way is ignorant and patterns of the problem
*part of the problem
I feel sorry for them. They also reduce the quality of my life by making public areas much less usable. I strongly feel that the Capitol Hill community bears too much of the burden of the mentally ill and the substance abusers from other cities, counties, and states. I wonder if people who don’t feel this way all have cars and don’t have to really see this stuff close up. For thoses who seem to want to shush those who have had enough, is there any level of saturation that would change your mind? If half the people on the Hill were homeless, would you still want to live here?
As an example, I invite you to be or try to imagine yourself as a small woman and walk by Sound Mental Health by yourself early in the morning, and tell me whether having to be so alert to the possibility that one of the truly disturbed people hanging around might break into a run and chop you to death with a hatchet really ought to be an acceptable part of living in Seattle?
There are places I just do not feel safe walking any more, and if I stop walking, it makes it less safe for others, and so on. Even if you don’t think the number of socially unpredictable people on the Hill is a problem, it could still become your problem if enough others do.
Thanks so much for your post. Like you, those of us who have had to confront the situations of which you speak, are with you. It seems The City has decided that Capitol Hill is some sort of human dumping ground that (because of our area’s reputation for compassion and tolerance) allows the mayor and the police chief to ignore these serious public safety and public health problems. I’m fatigued over the reality that our elected officials are intent on making believe these problems don’t exist. I guess it’s a lot easier than having to actually deal with them and it makes sense as it is the standard m.o. of most politicians.
I can only speak for myself and I’m not trying to shush people. I don’t have a car so I am walking the streets of the neighborhood daily. I personally do not feel threatened by mentally ill people or drug addicts and I can’t think of one single incident I’ve ever had with them in all the time I’ve lived here. Yes, there are problems but I think some of the fears you have are unfounded. I have been by Sound Mental Health more times than I can count. The majority of mentally people are not scary or threatening or a danger to the public. They are ill. Plain and simple. They are are suffering. That said, I have been harassed and threatened by some “normal” people in the neighborhood who use their male privilege to bully their neighbors. So, that’s my perspective. There are a lot of things in the neighborhood that I consider problems (the over-development, loss of character, high cost of housing etc.) but for me the homeless people and drug addicts are not at the top of that list. I’m not trying to discount your experience or concerns I have just have a different viewpoint.
Mimi, I like your point of view in your couple of posts above. Giving money to people in the street is a personal choice, and it’s up to the person receiving it to decide how to use it. Sharing what you have by giving to nonprofits for resource distribution is good, but so is putting the money directly into someone’s hand sometimes. People with mental illness aren’t scary to me either, and (as another poster mentioned) worrying about being attacked by someone suffering with mental illness is worrying about something that’s probably just not going to happen. It’s an idea that restigmatizes people.
I think the fact that good people are having a discussion over how threatening or not our neighborhood drug addicts and mentally ill homeless people are is, indeed, the point. We should not have to live in a neighborhood where streets filled with these people exist. Not because they are bad or less than us, but because our city and society has decided to do nothing to help curb this problem by helping these people. Throw on top of that the fact that there are organized gangs roaming our neighborhood in coordinated efforts to mug and steal and it’s a very overwhelming stew.
Mimi – You know, I agree that I am not threatened by most of the people wandering our streets. But, I’ll give you an example, I was walking down Broadway a couple years ago, and a man came up behind me and was shouting and seemed, to me, much more dangerous than the average shouting, crazy person. Enough so that I ducked into a shop to let him go by. That person turned out to be the guy who set Neighbors on fire a month later. Another person who gave me the creeps enough that I reversed my course in the middle of the sidewalk and crossed Broadway in the middle of the block ended up getting arrested a few months later for armed robbery. Another guy I used to avoid outside Sound Mental Health I’m fairly sure ended up being the guy who followed the guy from QFC and killed him with a hatchet to the head. So, you know, maybe I am just out more than most people, but I don’t get why people are telling me that some of these people aren’t extremely dangerous.
There is currently a young blond man I see occasionally who seems to be very amped on something, I am guessing meth. When I see him, I feel that he poses a danger to me, and I avoid him. On the other hand, I walk through Cal Anderson sometimes, past Dick’s at night, etc., and I don’t feel the need to take evasive action most of the time. But when I do, you know, I think I am right.
And all I am saying is, even if the percentage of homeless people who are dangerous is low, there are enough of them that I run across someone I think is dangerous enough for me to change my course a couple times a week on average. That is too much, for me, at least, and it is something that I don’t want to put up with as I get older. So if this isn’t addressed, I will eventually move, and there will be one less dedicated pedestrian around here.
Oh, and I also agree, Mimi, that this population doesn’t cause all problems ever. I realize that I am much, much more likely to be run over than murdered on the hill, and the folks driving like maniacs while texting and just generally being oblivious are definitely not these folks.
Keith, What kind of solution is “enough is enough”? What does that propose to do about the issues that homeless people and drug addicts face? Or, have you not thought that far yet? The idea of “cleaning up” Capitol Hill, or the homeless, or the addicts is the wrong mentality.
The key to ending homelessness is giving people homes. Addiction deserves treatment, as does any disease, but it also deserves a harm reduction strategy. We need more 1811s in the city, along with more needle exchanges and better access to naloxone, not to mention affordable housing and a living wage.
We need to clean up society and our own selfish interests for peace and tranquility.
When it come to the defecating and urinating in ally ways is mostly due to the fact there is really no where else to go. When I was homeless on Broadway as a teenager running away from abuse there was no where to go. Even at 7 months pregnant most businesses wouldn’t let me use there bathroom. Drop in centers and the college aren’t always opens and it really leaves you no other choice. Honestly where do you expect people to use the bathroom if you provide them with no place to do so 24 hours a day .
Sorry your life has turned out this way and I hope that you will find the strength to walk away from that hellish drug.
One of the reasons the neighborhood has become a “human dumping ground” as some charming caring person mentioned is because Capitol Hill for the past 30 – 40 years has mostly been a “transient” neighborhood. The majority of the population rents, They are not invested in what happens in their neighborhood. There has been so much turn over that no one stays long enough to care.
Over the years the city has put every halfway house/ mental illness facility / drug treatment homes / homeless shelters and such on Capitol Hill and as far as I can tell no one ever said “enough!”
I do have to say that the homelessness its not as bad as it was 20 years ago You could not walk down Broadway without agressive panhandling on every corner and drugs and dru
Like almost everyone else in the neighborhood, I wasn’t born on Capitol Hill. I’m not even from the PNW. But I’ve lived on Capitol Hill since moving to Seattle a few years ago and I wouldn’t live anywhere else. But It doesn’t take long to see that Capitol Hill has a homeless problem. It’s frankly the first thing any visitor notices when they walk outside. Some are drug addicts, some are mentally ill…none of them pay to live here. And they don’t have to be our problem.
Imagine what Cal Anderson would be like without it’s nomadic population… Think about how pleasant your morning commute could be without the sleeping runaway teenagers in every door. What if there weren’t groups of homeless middle-aged men hanging out by the entrance to every store you walk into?
It’s refreshing to see people getting fed up with it and talking about. Now how to we make it illegal to sleep on the street and panhandle?
It’s already illegal to camp out on public property, but usually the police look the other way, and I can sort-of understand this because if they write a citation it will be ignored, and doing so will not deter the behavior. For those sleeping in entryways to private businesses, the property or business owner must call in a complaint for anything to be done, and the homeless know to clear out before the business opens in the morning. And where a business is vacant, it’s even less likely that there will be any intervention.
“Aggressive panhandling” is illegal, but usually the panhandling does not meet that definition. Sitting on the sidewalk to panhandle, whether aggressive or not, is also illegal….but, again, this is not enforced.
I lived on capitol hill as a kid, my family moved simply because finding a parking place was impossible. back then it was a great place to be a kid, volunteer park
was full of hippies and bongo drums with the trucks that sold popcorn and peanuts.
There was little crime and you never saw panhandlers like you do today, I
have to agree that it is out of control now, but I cant seem to come up with a solution. however, I do think much of the problem is mental health issues that the city and state do not want to address, until they do it can only get worse. I fear
for the future of young people like Luke, they have to want help, and to me it sounds like he does not.