Understanding the Homeless Situation in Seattle

I’m from Vancouver, Canada, which is a 2.5 hour drive north of Seattle. We have a similar issue with transient junkies ruining public spaces. I’ve been living all over the eastern US for a decade and I’m moving to Bellevue later this year.

In case it wasn’t clear, in both Seattle and Vancouver (and Portland, SF, and LA) a lot of the transient junkies are not local, but are from states and provinces where you can freeze to death in the winter outside. They come out west to be homeless, unstable, and/or junkies because on the pacific coast you can live outside year round without dying from the weather.

Like Seattle, the impotent hand-wringing coddling of these people by city hall and the non-profit poverty industry results in creating a reputation for the city as welcoming to transient junkies from the prairies and east coast. It’s easy to be homeless on the west coast, especially when local governments roll over and create free services for them and let them take over public spaces.

Like Seattle, Vancouver has become a city for the rich and the desperately dysfunctional and no one in between.

/r/SeattleWA Thread