To the north in the Pike-Pine alley (Image: CHS
The GSBA chamber of commerce hosts a virtual neighborhood business public safety meeting every second Thursday of the month as community leaders, and city and police officials have vowed to try to address street disorder and drug crimes in the Pike/Pine neighborhood. Some say it will be difficult to make progress at trouble spots like Broadway and Pike if two key areas aren’t cleared out, cleaned up, and, maybe, sealed off.
Chris Persons, head of affordable developer Community Roots Housing that has two buildings on the block, says the problems in the alley running between Pike and Pine just off Broadway are going to spoil any efforts to clean up the streets around it.
Persons says the Broadway Crossing and Pride Place buildings are “literally broken into daily” and that the alley full of dumpsters and used by nearby businesses including Neighbours and Walgreens is also a place where drug users and people suffering from mental illness are living, sleeping, and defecating, fighting and breaking into things — and hurting.
“These people need compassion and they need services.”
They also need to be moved out where they can be reached, Persons says. So far, the CEO says, city officials have allowed the problems to fester.
District 3’s representative on the Seattle City Council says she is looking into the situation and that part of the issue in making progress in Pike/Pine is coordinating across City Hall.
Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth says Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office “has a plan in the works.”
“That alley and the alley behind Rite Aid… those are problematic,” Hollingsworth said, referring to the alley stretching between E Olive Way and Thomas behind the former Broadway Rite Aid building that remains on the market that has also been part of disorder and drug crime for years and was the site of this March 2022 murder.
“Can it be closed? First it needs a cleaning. I’m asking SDOT for solutions,” Hollingsworth said.
How could the Seattle Department of Transportation help? The council member said one of the questions being asked is if the alleys could be sealed off to access.
The alley running between Pike and Pine would seem to provide an answer. No way.
On a recent tour, Persons showed where people have broken into building spaces, and garages through wire fences and bars. People have broken into the empty space between buildings to have an area of shelter. In one corner, a filthy blanket, a pile of trash, a large cudgel-like branch, and the soot from a fire marked a recent camp.
The questions around the alleys come as the focus on crime and street problems around Cal Anderson and the Pike/Pine core have ebbed and flowed after a year of community outcry and new efforts from the GSBA, Seattle Police, and the mayor’s office.
Last month, CHS reported on Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess’s renewed efforts sparked by neighborhood outcry over an October murder on 11th Ave. Burgess said his office was working on a plan to add the area around Cal Anderson and Pike/Pine identified by SPD as a trouble zone for drug crimes and street disorder to an anti-crime camera system pilot being rolled out in the area around Aurora Ave N, the International District including Little Saigon, and the 3rd Ave corridor downtown. The pilot is creating a new Seattle Police Department surveillance system combining Closed-Circuit Television Camera systems above the city’s streets with “real-time crime center” software.
Burgess also revealed the effort to establish a Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) station on the street level of the Harvard Market shopping center in a space left empty when Chase Bank departed the challenged corner. That deal was never signed and the new city crisis response department is shifting its goals for how it expands across the city. In a briefing this month to the city council, officials said CARE is focusing on “co-location in police precincts” while it continues to explore possible “satellite locations.”
Other changes are also planned including bollards that were scheduled to be installed along the plaza area of Cal Anderson Park to prevent vehicle access from Nagle Place, “after hearing constituent feedback.”
Meanwhile, Burgess and Harrell continue to focus the discussion on increasing the number of cops in Seattle, the issue new SPD interim Chief Shon Barnes says is his top priority. “Ultimately, we need more police officers to be able to do proactive patrols that deter illegal behaviors,” a city spokesperson told CHS earlier this year.
Other City Hall initiatives including one of its biggest haven’t made much of an impact. CHS reported here on the so far rarely used Capitol Hill Stay Out of Drug Area and the sole recipient of a banishment order for the zone. In the time since our report, the city says there has been a second.
The GSBA is also pushing forward. Its second Thursday meetings continue and it is bringing on a new Capitol Hill Neighborhood Safety Coordinator boosted by $70,000 a year support from the city. Responsibilities include identifying, communicating, and addressing “public safety challenges” in the neighborhood, tracking “crime patterns,” and providing “follow-up support to business owners who have been impacted by criminal activity, including assistance with crime reporting, coordination with the Seattle Police Department, the Seattle City Attorney’s office, and the King County Prosecutor’s office.”
The chamber of commerce organization is also making a larger push with early discussions around forming a new Pike/Pine Business Improvement Area that would use assessments on area properties to fund neighborhood anti-graffiti programs and clean-up programs along the streets, and, maybe — if officials don’t end up fencing it off — the Pike to Pine alley.
To the north (Image: CHS)
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In 2021 SDOT wrote to me saying they had no money to replace damaged/missing street signs in the area. Not sure how the city thinks SDOT is going to help unless someone front loads the cash directly to SDOT.
But the SDOT had money to pay for the muralists to redo the Black Lives Matter mural in the middle of E. Pine Street in 2020 and every year afterwards.
How much does that cost?
This is just about every alley in Capitol Hill, not just these problematic ones where it’s concentrated. Anyone even considering the notion of trying to “close” an alley is insanely oblivious to the root of the situation and only looking to push it further into the margins for them to ignore. If we want to address these issues we need to start really addressing the root causes like homelessness, mental health, and drug addiction. The city could work on programs to attract public defenders to help process mental health and drug treatment cases to get people experiencing those conditions into treatment. There’s plenty to do that’s more helpful than exploring how to shut down an alley!
I think there are plenty of things we could do to make the alleys more appealing in addition to addressing to root issues. It would be great to have better dumpsters that are designed to only let trash/recycling/compost in and make it difficult to take out by anyone but the waste haulers like many other cities around the world. Making them more pedestrian friendly with little beautification projects and speed bumps to keep vehicles from speeding through so that more people use them as walking paths and to hang out doing more positive activities.
More dumpsters would help for sure. The owners pay for them though. So I think the city should allow business owners in these 2 ally’s free dumpsters instead of these overflowing, trash on the ground crap. Either require them to buy enough trash compacity or give it to them. But it’s an obvious start for sure that costs nuthin’. Empty them more often in those areas. Bike patrol the areas. Things we already have that costs nobody much if anything at all.
Kinda ironic that Community Roots Housing is saying “get them services”.
Pretty sure CRH is just in charge of building management, not actually making initial contact with people in need & placing them with various services.
you’d be wrong. I would know. it’s EXACTLY what they do.
CRH probably has a social worker on staff or some sort of person residents can consult for assistance with getting things like orca lift, food stamps, and other programs but that service is for resident’s of their buildings not homeless people in the alley.
People might assume that about CRH, but they’d be wrong. They can’t even get basic property management tasks like crediting residents’ rents right, much less provide a social worker. Hell, they don’t even provide building security. We had it at the beginning, then they refused to pay for it.
Multiple residents at Pride Place have gotten pay or evict notices, and when they produce proof in the form of cleared checks from their banks, it takes months for CRH to rescind the notices. Every time someone asks a simple question of the property manager, he responds with “I’m not comfortable with this” and shuts them down. It took over a year for them to figure out something as simple as providing city mandated compost receptacle.
CRH is a joke, except it’s not funny when mail isn’t delivered for months because they put the wrong address on the leases and reported the wrong address to the USPS. People couldn’t get their Social Security sorted out for months because they couldn’t do an address verification. My water bill still has the erroneous address, so I can’t set up the only free payment option, and I have to pay the “convenience fee”.
They built Pride Place as a LGBTQIA+ Senior community, then recruited homophobic tenants to fill the building. CRH talks a good line and hangs all the right pictures in their main office hallway, but they are the most incompetent property management I’ve ever had in my long life.
I have filed a grievance with them on all these issues and have just gone through the process last week.
If you’d like to know what I am up to? Fell free to contact me for the details. I support you 100%
[email protected]
I would suggest the city engage contractors to provide daily alleywide pressure washing to clean the area and discourage some of the activities being complained about. This tactic is being used downtown to address similar issues in some areas.
Yes! Like they do downtown.
that’s what I am saying…have been saying over and over. We’ll see I guess? But it’s ultra effective at checking all the boxes for little cast.
That’s a bandaid solution that puts a bunch of trash into the sound, I see people pressure wash or leaf blow alley trash into the street and neighboring landscaping just about every day.
Your comment is like someone coming into the ER with a gunshot wound and responding with, “you should really wash that with soap and water daily”
It’s the right way to do it on the few (two) ally’s in question.
“That’s a bandaid solution that puts a bunch of trash into the sound”
YES! YES! THAT’S IT!…lol A solution…you said solution.
You also said “Band-aid” and “sound”(puget variety).
Okay…I take a giant dump in the middle of anywhere. Ally, street et ilk. What happens to it?
Well, first, it sits there. Then? Sun/Rain. A few cars run over it maybe, maybe not. Other dogs sniff and pee on it, or not.
Where does it end up eventually? Where does everything that’s like that end up? “sound”…along with needles and Band-aids and everything else.
But while it was making its way to the “sound”? It’s smelly, messy, unsanitary etc. It sits there waiting…and waiting.
I live here okay? The smells in the summer are really something to behold. The least they could do is put out more dumpsters or force the cost onto the businesses there.
We had a shit shack in Panmunjom. It smells like that. I thought that would be the worst smell I’ll ever smell. Worst sight I’d ever see. 5-55 gallon drums full of human waste to the brim/overflowing. The worst kinda human waste. Marine’s home from Libo waste. Marines wake up after Libo waste.
I had 5 kids. I changed 99% or more of their diapers. Everyone warned me. I just reminded them “I’ve seen things”. Fatherhood was a breeze. A pleasure. I love being a Dad. Best gig I ever had.
All of this experience in waste has taught me one thing.
Clean it up ASAP.
Because in civilian life? You don’t have people like me to do it for you.
I live a block with an alley where the majority of the recycle and trash dumpsters have locks on them. The apartment managers and condos got sick of routinely cleaning the alley along with being kept up late into the night by vagrants dumpster diving or having loud conversations outside occupants’ bedrooms while dumpster diving.
Locks help and I strongly advice for more people to install them
it’s not just alleys. We literally have homeless people sleeping on the front porch of our business right now and we called the cops almost 4 hours ago and they still haven’t come.
Did they ever arrive?
I can do you one better. We had an aggressive homeless guy sleeping on our porch, and when we called the cops, they told us we needed to film ourselves asking the guy to leave before they could act. Well, I did so, but as a 5’foot tall young woman, you can guess how that went for me. The cops are so useless, it’s a joke.
In other words put yourself in a dangerous situation. Maybe SPD could have a few more officers to respond to these things if they were not sending 5 cops to a call about a person in need of assistance who is not causing any sort of problems. I see that so often.5-6 cops one individual that is either in cuffs or on a stretcher and the cops all seem to be standing around. Why do some calls unnecessarily get such a large response?
These alleys are local access and as such are the responsibility of the adjacent property owners!!
And if they hired private security to physically relocate the addicts slumped over in the alley or digging through a dumpster flinging trash over you’d pitch a fit. The problem is addiction and mental illness and a refusal to realize that housing first has failed.
I rather agree.
how does “housing first” fail us?
When the housing has no rules or requirements that the residents get treatment for their mental health and addiction issues. The housing just becomes a nightmare with people overdosing and dying in their apartments. Mentally ill and drugged out residents terrorizing the neighborhood and police and paramedics constantly responding to 911 calls for OD’s and drug related crime in the those housing first buildings.
so housing changes nothing.
those services are onsite.
I don’t think that people living in alleys is a sign that housing first has failed…if they were housed I’d expect they wouldn’t be living there to start with? Just a guess…
And private security and property owners are not going to risk their lives dealing with drug addicts and mentally ill folks and they shouldn’t. They can get shot, stabbed, Hep-C. Hell no!
It’s only going to get worse as the new “supportive housing” comes online on the Hill. Concentrated misery. I’m really sick and tired I can’t even walk to get a coffee before work without a stressful interaction with a mentally ill and usually either under drugged or over drugged addict. I really don’t know how families do it, it’s stressful enough as a single woman.
I with ya!
Let’s do what we can right now with what we have.
#1: MORE DUMPSTERS!!! EMPTY MORE OFTEN!!!!
Get more dumpsters there free of charge. The issue is businesses pay. Dumpsters in the ally is the issue. They need to be locked. There needs to be more.
Just in the current areas/ally’s. See what happens. Powerwash and see if it works? Cheap, fast and easy. Git er’ done gurlll!
#2: E BIKE PATROLS!
Get these cops and others on e-bikes/trikes. They are a great force multiplier. The cops need specialised bikes. Like an Ariel Grizzly or the ilk. They could even pull a trailer along with cop stuff. But they are the #1 best “patrol vehicle” for ally patrols. And 4 cops in this area(Pike/Pine/Broadway/Cal Anderson) is a big deal.
#3: The “PIKE/PINE” flags on the poles. Get rid of them. They are ratty, nasty, filthy rags that don’t hang anymore in some cases. They are wrapped around the flag pole itself!
#4: Replace all the lights that are out. Example…The decorative lamppost on the SE corner of Seattle Central college. The4 corner of Broadway and Pine. The end one has been out since the last storm and the one next to it is blinking when the wind is blowing. But it stays on otherwise. Just take a quick look and see if all our lights are working.
Pet peeve…SCOOTERS!!!!
Can someone clean the bike rack areas? On a semi regular? The one in front of the QFC Pike? Broadway is a leaf bog. It’s just a nasty swamp there. Benn there for a year or more.
Rental scooters. The “Chargers” flood bike racks with scooters and you can not lock up your bike. We need to regulate that. Bike racks are PUBLIC funded. Not private.
My solution? Make the scooter companies build an infrastructure. Only allow them to be parked in designated areas as to not block sidewalks everywhere. Have a city ordinance or something stating how they should be parked. “The More You Know” kinda program. E vehicles and personal mobility is going to continue growing. We need to figure this out. a “scooters everywhere” approach is going to come back and bite us. We need to start now in regulating e scooters vs. the sidewalks. People riding on sidewalks is 100% bullshit. Just ride in the street. Nobody will hit you. They may honk if you are going 5mph but nobody will hit you.
#4: be the change you want to see. Clean up the bike rack area yourself and have a sign that says “doing the work the city won’t” or submit a find it fix it to SDOT requesting cleaning of the bike rack. Email CM Joy requesting clean-up. Call the Seattle City Mayor’s office and rise your concerns. 50+ posts here won’t solve it.
l get so tired of the fast food garbage wrappers from places that are 10+ miles away from here littering my 15 minute power walk that I actually pick them up along the way. Not for anyone else, but for me, because I hate seeing it every day. Local pro pro pro whatever advocate signs in apartment windows here ignore the street trash, the city never picks it up- now just me out of sheer annoyance.
I’m disabled asshole
Well then clearly an email, phone call, or find it fix it ticket are out of the question.
They were making a pretty innocuous suggestion, which included options that don’t involve physically doing jack shit yourself. If that’s a trigger for you, may need to think harder about why that is. But they’re right, bitching and moaning in the comments section on the internet does nothing to fix the real-world problems you’re complaining about, though you do have the power to do SOMETHING yourself.
Naw…it’s the mean spirited ignorance that gets me.
I actually do do stuff. Me advertising it here isn’t needed today.
I calle dthe White House 3 days ago. I highly recommend it. It’s actually fun. I urged them to recall the Teslas. They are setting themselves on fire. I got the lady to laugh…lol
There’s a ton of shit, jack shit and other stuff I do. I literally have no gripes and need nothing. I do it because there was a time I couldn’t read or write and had to practice. Today I do it as a way to at least speak out as best I can. You and others criticise it.
Also? The fact I do not advertise it? Means I get more honest brokers and less Karens. Fact.
The issue is you have no idea what I do. So to make disparaging judgements is kinda ignorant. That’s all I am saying’.
I have to wonde rthough…
Why go after me? But not the other folks saying the same thing? It is clearly personal. I trigger you with a simple, factual response. That’s a lot more grace than you give others.
secondly…This is call “broadcasting”.
You are not too bright.
I may not be bright but you are a test tube baby.
c’mon man? there was no such thing at the time.
unlike when you were born
This is funsies. You aren’t even me. …and I am kinda bright. I’ve had SDOT clean sidewalk bike racks through FIFI.
(I may have completely blacked out last night … but Ii post with an email and I didn’t post that .. wow. mean opposite my name. mean)
Thank you for picking up litter. I’m also very frustrated with all the trash on the streets, much of it left by the junkies or thrown out of windows of passing cars (usually the ones with illegally tinted front windows). So I pick it up as I walk around the neighborhood too. Or if there’s a huge mess, I make a Find It Fix it ticket.
Yes, reporting to Find it, Fix it is a great way to take care of larger amounts of litter (like furniture). In my experience, the response time is pretty good.
Nobody will hit you? That is not true if that were the case there would be zero incidents of hit and run and people getting hit by a car. Some streets are very narrow and there are so many awful drivers on the streets breaking laws left and right so you claim that no one will hit you is not true.
Well? If you do not pull between cars to cooperate? I do not ride on the sidewalk ever. Neither do the people on real bikes. It’s the rentals that are the main issue. They just are. Amateurs riding on the sidewalks. Yea, that’s wayyyy better. They are flying by in some cases. Often actually. Sidewalks are for walking.
Trying to “waddabout” to drivers? They too have a responsibility to avoid you because we have row. Your alarmist “hit and run”? Just wow. It happens of course. It’s simply NOT the problem however. Ever see a car go down the sidewalk to just kill as many as possible? I have. Mardi Gras.
Where are all the incidents of “hit and run”? I find extremely few. Certainly not on the Hill. Cops going down side streets at 70+MPH in the dark cars on both sides parking and raining killing a girl in the crosswalk. You mean that one?
There’s like 1s’ of the hit and run pranks. Hit and run criminals. I ride a scooter and never on the sidewalks. I am never worried. Drivers do see you and do avoid you.
You act like it’s Death Race 5000
“These people need compassion and they need services.”
I hear you. But I also understand that this blue pill problem is beyond housing and treatment. So when you speak of services, what are we talking about?
Compassion? Sounds like a nice way for the left to push an anti-homeless agenda with out sounding conservative, but Someone has to. Services are just about none existant. And wait until those federal dollars take a hit. Oof!
Seattle is way too tolerant of the drug zombie apocalypse. It is sucking the life out of the city. Other cities outside the “progressive” west coast seem to be able to manage it. It is sad that progressives have gone so far down the ideological rabbit hole on homelessness, drugs, law enforcement, and criminal justice that they can’t seem to snap out of it and admit that harm reduction, housing first, and criminal justice reform has failed. And no I am not a Republican. But I have watched this self-created dystopia develop in west coast cities driven by the left wing policies. There is no doubt this is a self created crisis. It is not a housing crisis. The root cause is drugs and tolerance of bullshit that has concentrated the problem here.
They are human beings, not zombies. You can’t just punish them out of existence.
Honestly they are something in between closer to zombies
Then they should act like human beings. I see a lot of zombies…folded over.
An addict who is dysfunctionally high and incapable of maintaining decorum in public is a sad sight, and a person in that state has clearly had something go very wrong with their life; but they are still people, and talking about them as though they were monsters from a horror movie does solve any problems, nor make it any easier to help them get out of the mess they’re in.
When you see people like that, try and imagine they’re an old friend or relative, going through what’s likely the worst part of their life to date. Yes, they act like zombies, because they’re on heavy and catastrophically addictive drugs, but they’re still human beings whether that’s convenient for you to come to terms with or not. If it was as easy as simply deciding to not be sick, a lot of people would probably do it, but it just isn’t that simple. Do I think that means we should just let them do whatever they want? Of course not. But dehumanizing discourse doesn’t get us any closer to the goal of improving the situation on the streets right now.
Yeah you’re right but notice that people are more offended by and expressive about the use of problematic language than the reality that these people’s lives and minds are being destroyed by addiction, and we have designed a system where they will be on the street until a permanent housing spot opens up. The same people who did all the language policing focused on destigmatization then pushed a bunch of disastrous policy.
I have family member who are addicted. They have abandoned their children, robbed from all of us, and hurt others. There comes a point when you shouldn’t care more about them than they do for themselves. I’m at that point whether you agree with it or not.
And…my addicted family members are not dealing with trauma or something terrible that happened to them. They are dealing with their bad choices. I understand a lot of folks out there have had a rough go of it but they too are causing an abundance of problems for the rest of us and most don’t want treatment. Life is hard for everyone, it’s the choices you make and how you manage yourself that makes the difference.
Virtue signal all you want, but you are the problem. you are a fool
he happens to be right on both counts.
Oh well, you’ll always be mad about it.
Totally agree with you. I’m in other “blue” cities often and they are nowhere near as bad as here and those cities have larger populations. For those so offended and say then move…I would love to.
what cities are those exactly?
You must be talking about east coast cities. The other left coast cities (Portland, San Francisco, LA) all have the same problems as we do, or even worse.
Google Philadelphia Kensington Neighborhood. It’s not just a west coast thing.
Nowhere near the city center. Letting them take over the heart of the city is very much a west coast thing.
Stop calling people zombies, you sound VERY dumb
I lived in an apartment building that shared the Thomas St/Olive Way alley up until late last year. It is a nightmare. The smell just walking past that alley in the summer was indescribable. This wasn’t the fault of the businesses or apartments there in my opinion, but the people who would just dump full trash bins out or throw bags of garbage from the dumpsters against brick walls or at nearby parked cars in drug fueled rages. Swarms of rats lived all up and down the block, which at least meant something was putting a dent in the garbage that would lay out baking in the hot sun all day.
There is a small parking lot that opens into the alley that seems to be completely unmonitored, and is a hub for drug dealing/using, as is most areas of the block (sidewalks, open parking garages, apartment front steps, etc). Last summer someone set fire to a piece of wooden furniture in that alley right next to my apartment building’s wooden fence, which then went up in flames itself (very thankful to SFD for their quick response which likely prevented it spreading to my building). I have seen cop cars in and around that alley numerous times, but never actually saw cops LEAVE their cars, even when incidents were taking place in front of them in plain view. One such incident included two women screaming at each other at 11pm one night and threatening each other, and I believe even hitting each other a few times, all directly in front of a cop car that did not move, did not say anything out their window even. Just sat there for a few minutes then drove away while the women kept screaming.
The morning I was finally moving out, I was woken up at 7am to an assault taking place in that parking lot. By the time I was awake enough to think to call the cops, the assault had ended, and from previous experiences with SPD, I knew there was no point in calling it in. I have been told more than once by 911 operators that if I as a witness was not an impacted party, and if the assault had already ended, they would not respond nor make a report.
I genuinely hope even one of the referenced programs changes this block, but SPD claiming low staffing being the issue doesn’t feel accurate to me, considering how many times I’ve seen them just stand idly by. Their apathy seems to be a far bigger issue.
Were you hoping they’d show up and watch a hologram recreation of the incident? We can be upset that there’s so few cops this kind of stuff goes down, but we can’t blame cops for triaging against chasing ghosts. I’m sorry…you probably disagree.
No, they were probably just hoping that the cops would take such reports seriously and actually do the absolute bare minimum to investigate them instead of shrugging their shoulders.
ya think the taxpayers would fund a pilot “Judge Dredd” program?
Yes!! Let’s go Joy! That alley is especially challenging and closing it off will help tremendously. Closing to only local access is necessary, is shows we care about safe streets/alleys and provides an interim solution.
Sealing off those alleys isn’t going to help. Arrest people breaking into buildings, starting fires, doing/selling illegal drugs. Wow, what an idea? I was leaving Walgreens about two weeks ago and there was someone laid out in that alley. There was an ambulance and fire truck already there, an ambulance on the way trying to turn left from Broadway and another fire truck coming down Pine from the station. The vehicles blocked Pine from Harvard to Broadway on both sides. All that for a guy overdosing, no doubt for the second, third, fourth time. I don’t care about that guy. I don’t have sympathy for him or anyone similar to that. I really f-ing don’t. I have sympathy for us who live here and work hard and don’t intentionally hurt others for our own selfish needs. We are paying for that somewhere. Over it!
How many millions of dollars have been spent/wasted by SFD constantly responding to overdoses Vs prevention and reducing this vicious cycle in the first place. Other west coast and blue cities do not have the level of crisis we do something needs to break the cycle humanely.
Have you heard of Portland or Los Angeles?
how are you ‘hurt’ by others drug OD?
A few alleys have been closed off around 3rd ave downtown and it really seemed to help the entire area
Nope, it may have helped Third but only because it displaced the folks that frequented the alleys there elsewhere. You can find them on Blanchard now between First and Third where they’ve pretty much taken over the street. Closing alleys is a band aid at best, but not the solution.
You can’t say nope and then immediately agree that it helped the area lol. That part of belltown is its own issue that also needs to be addressed. Lots of belltown is worse than pike/pine or 3rd and pike imo and for some reason isn’t talked about as much.
Their point is that it’s not an actual fix, it’s just a cosmetic band-aid that moves people around; if these alleys close it’s unlikely that the people frequenting them are just gonna up and move outta town as a result lol
how many murders you got there? Or is it just loud cars?
yeah man, it has just moved them. You can find them around the area.
So they weren’t in belltown at all before the alleys on 3rd and pike/pine were closed off a couple of months ago?
That’s not what I said.
wow
I got a problem alley, honey…and it just ain’t goin’ away amirite?
When the 17+ year CEO of an organization started as Stevens Neighborhood Improvement Program > Capitol Hill Housing Improvement Program > Community Roots Housing .. maybe pause and take a listen how an affordable housing provider is having to navigate the current issues of Capitol Hill and Seattle.
When affordable housing providers have to deal with constant graffiti removal, break-ins, and tenant safety means that there are less affordable options that can be extended to members of the community that need housing. Neighborhood blight hurts affordable housing.
(Shout out to Chuck and Chris for believing and championing the mission of CHHIP past and present – they both made/make a difference to our community and surrounding neighborhoods.)
Chris is a great dude. He’ll be gone soon.
I am amazed that these plans are being conducted without ANY RESIDENTS. I am sure GSBA has the interests of residents, but none of the members have a business in these blocks or has any idea of what happens 24-hours a day. It’s like Trump making peace plans for Ukraine without their being present. All sorts of plans have been made without ANY input from residents, Residents don’t even know what the plans are.
How arrogant to make plans without direct knowledge or input. All of the statements of community involvement and transparency fall flat. The concerns addressed are the concerns of those who pass through or who want to contain the problem in these neighborhoods. Residents have attempted to provide information, ideas, and volunteer hours, but continue to be left out. Decisions are made with developers–to meet their needs, not of the existing community.
Such a sad waste of lives and a waste of money: Seattle is spending 1.25 BILLION dollars to turn the polyclinic building into a mental health center, not to cure anyone but to simply “manage” people’s illnesses until they die. Doesn’t that seem ridiculous to anyone? I had one family member who was diagnosed with “incurable” “bipolar with psychosis,” and another with “incurable” schizophrenia. Yet, they were both cured because I FINALLY dumped conventional psychiatry and found treatments that actually work. Seattle is still pushing conventional psych drugs which are designed to cure no one.