Seattle Has Collected 42,000 Pounds Of Garbage Around Homeless Camps In Just 3 Weeks

The Seattle Times reports that the city’s mayor is quietly trying to clean up homeless encampments and has so far collected 42,000 pounds of trash in just three weeks. But it seems efforts to break up vehicular encampments (people living in cars) are going about as well as could be expected:

The program, which quietly started in mid-May, has resulted in the collection of almost 42,000 pounds of garbage and waste from cleanups around RVs and other vehicles parked in Sodo, Georgetown, Ballard and the Central District.
But in the meantime, residents of these vans and RVs continue to play a cat-and-mouse game with the city to avoid getting towed. At a cleanup in Sodo last week, several RV and camper residents simply moved a few blocks away from where they had originally parked.
The new initiative comes as King County’s annual homeless Point in Time count found, once again, that homeless vehicle camping outpaced homeless people sleeping in tents. The snapshot count found more than 3,300 people sleeping in vehicles in the county, a 46 percent increase from the previous year…
At Wednesday’s cleanup, most vehicles parked along Sixth Avenue were gone when city workers from an alphabet soup of departments — utilities, parks, police, transportation and administrative services — showed up…
Many of the vehicles simply relocated farther north along Sixth Avenue, finding another curb along which to park.

Last week Seattle’s mayor announced a new homeless initiative which will cost $11 million in the first year. The goal is to create more “tiny homes” encampments where the homeless can live without any regulation of their drug or alcohol use. But the group Speak Out Seattle, which opposed the head city’s head tax, is now opposing the new spending as well. The group is pointing to a document published in May by the Interagency Council on Homelessness which offered a warning about so-called sanctioned encampments:

Creating these environments may make it look and feel like the community is taking action to end homelessness on the surface—but, by themselves, they have little impact on reducing homelessness. Ultimately, access to stable housing that people can afford, with the right level of services to help them succeed, is what ends homelessness. People staying within such settings are still unsheltered, still living outside, and remain homelessness – and oftentimes, these settings are not providing them with a truly safe, healthy, and secure environment…
For example, communities often find that temporary sheds (which are sometimes referred to as “tiny homes”) or other structures that may have been put up in these settings do not hold up over time and require significant upgrades and/or repairs. Maintaining a hygienic environment can prove challenging if there are not adequate sanitation facilities at the sites.

In short, this is an expensive, feel-good effort that is not going to significantly improve the homeless situation and which is likely to increase crime in the area and cost far more long-term than the $11 million the mayor is proposing to spend. Maintaining these new camps is expected to cost nearly $9 million a year for as long as they remain in place, but the city has no funding set aside for that at present.

There are more permanent solutions on the drawing board but building thousands of higher-density, affordable housing is going to take time. In the meantime, the city is going to keep chasing these vehicular homeless camps from one street to another and cleaning up after the mess they leave behind.

ANOTHER reason ‘city employees’ ‘HATE’ Conservatives and their ilk.

Whenever there is a ‘Conservative’ style get together, most people take their trash with them or at least put it in the containers that are provided.

When the LIBERALS and their minions gather, one can expect mountains of trash which the unionized trash collecters get double and triple time to clean up after them.

I stopped at a truck stop/rest area/gas station and as I exited my vehicle the guy cleaning up the yard made it a point and came over and THANKED me for putting my trash in the container.

He said something about how he wished everyone were like me.

I (not so) subtly reminded him that if ALL put their trash in the assigned bins there would be no need for HIM to get paid to pick it up.
To prove my point, I wadded some papers up and dropped them on the ground so he had ‘something to do’. He thanked me and went whistling off on his merry way.

I read a story about a guy in Los Angeles. He buys old RV’s at a scrapyard and tows them to a curb where he rents them out for $500-$1000 a month. Most of the renters are employed but don’t make enough to afford traditional rent. If I recall, he does wastewater cleanouts too.

That actually sounds like a decent business plan.

These people are underemployed, not homeless.

I had to live away from my family for several months due to a job transfer. I gave some consideration to the urban camping thing but then I found a cheap enough situation renting a room.

The bums at these camps are a societal drag and need to be removed. The mental institutions need to be re-opened, drug addicts need to be offered rehab or incarceration. Perhaps both.

The son of a friend has been in the hospital on IV treatment for some really bad infection he got after someone broke his sternum doing CPR after an overdose. His hospital stay has been several weeks where I understand he’s grateful because it forced him to stay clean.

Such incarceration will help a certain segment of the addicts.

The camps are a pariah and must be eradicated. There was a small one in our city. The police were unable to legally enforce trespass laws due to the property in question being under probate, but they patrolled the area several times a day, made sure the people stayed alive, offered them transport to shelters instead and tried to make life uncomfortable.

The Chief flat out asked citizens to not help them out. Don’t feed them, don’t bring blankets or warm clothes. He said we want them to leave.

They must have finally figured something out because the camp is now gone.

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