Seattle is Dying

[SigurdReginson]

So, with covid in full swing me and a friend of mine decided to go hit up downtown Seattle on a lark. She hadn't really had a chance to kick around there, so I figured it'd make for a fun time.

We show up via the ferry and find that the terminal is completely blocked and rerouted. We walk down the gangplanks onto the main elevated walkway that skips the streets down below into the main city area.

As we walk further in, there is graffiti on everything. Everything; even on multi story buildings. Trash, graffiti, and tents all along the sides of the streets down below as we walk down that elevated walkway. We double back and decide to stay on the shoreline area on Alaskan Way since it looks a little more safe, plus it was getting close to the time we were supposed to go to the aquarium.

There has always been a terrible homeless issue in Seattle, but now I feel like the city has just thrown up their arms and are letting things fester without any real help or structure invested in any way. The place is imploding.

Not many people are out at all due to the day of the week, and covid of course. As we get to the aquarium, we had a really good time. There was lots of stuff to see, and it was worth the money. We then went up to pikes place and grabbed some red bean cakes and cookies from the famous Mee Sum Bakery. We found some fun little shops and enjoyed ourselves.

As soon as we got back onto the ferry, that feeling of oppressing dread slipped away and we made our way back just fine. We had a good time, but dear god... If something doesn't change there soon, I feel like something real bad is gonna unfold there. It's interesting too, since every other place (at least in the western side of the sound) is doing just fine and dandy like it always has.

 

[Kenny]

So, with covid in full swing me and a friend of mine decided to go hit up downtown Seattle on a lark. She hadn't really had a chance to kick around there, so I figured it'd make for a fun time.

We show up via the ferry and find that the terminal is completely blocked and rerouted. We walk down the gangplanks onto the main elevated walkway that skips the streets down below into the main city area.

As we walk further in, there is graffiti on everything. Everything; even on multi story buildings. Trash, graffiti, and tents all along the sides of the streets down below as we walk down that elevated walkway. We double back and decide to stay on the shoreline area on Alaskan Way since it looks a little more safe, plus it was getting close to the time we were supposed to go to the aquarium.

There has always been a terrible homeless issue in Seattle, but now I feel like the city has just thrown up their arms and are letting things fester without any real help or structure invested in any way. The place is imploding.

Not many people are out at all due to the day of the week, and covid of course. As we get to the aquarium, we had a really good time. There was lots of stuff to see, and it was worth the money. We then went up to pikes place and grabbed some red bean cakes and cookies from the famous Mee Sum Bakery. We found some fun little shops and enjoyed ourselves.

As soon as we got back onto the ferry, that feeling of oppressing dread slipped away and we made our way back just fine. We had a good time, but dear god... If something doesn't change there soon, I feel like something real bad is gonna unfold there. It's interesting too, since every other place (at least in the western side of the sound) is doing just fine and dandy like it always has.

How do you view the root cause?

 

[SigurdReginson]

How do you view the root cause?

I can't answer that with any kind of real insight, in all honesty. I don't live in Seattle, and I only ever visit as a local tourist. Seattle's issues are it's own and haven't seeped into the rest of the surrounding area, at least not where I live.

That said, there's a documentary under the name of "Seattle is Dying" that a local news channel made if you'd like more in depth insight into the issue. Keep in mind that the doccumentary was made before CHOP or covid. Seattle has especially been getting bad in the last few months, though.

 

[The Hammer]

So, with covid in full swing me and a friend of mine decided to go hit up downtown Seattle on a lark. She hadn't really had a chance to kick around there, so I figured it'd make for a fun time.

We show up via the ferry and find that the terminal is completely blocked and rerouted. We walk down the gangplanks onto the main elevated walkway that skips the streets down below into the main city area.

As we walk further in, there is graffiti on everything. Everything; even on multi story buildings. Trash, graffiti, and tents all along the sides of the streets down below as we walk down that elevated walkway. We double back and decide to stay on the shoreline area on Alaskan Way since it looks a little more safe, plus it was getting close to the time we were supposed to go to the aquarium.

There has always been a terrible homeless issue in Seattle, but now I feel like the city has just thrown up their arms and are letting things fester without any real help or structure invested in any way. The place is imploding.

Not many people are out at all due to the day of the week, and covid of course. As we get to the aquarium, we had a really good time. There was lots of stuff to see, and it was worth the money. We then went up to pikes place and grabbed some red bean cakes and cookies from the famous Mee Sum Bakery. We found some fun little shops and enjoyed ourselves.

As soon as we got back onto the ferry, that feeling of oppressing dread slipped away and we made our way back just fine. We had a good time, but dear god... If something doesn't change there soon, I feel like something real bad is gonna unfold there. It's interesting too, since every other place (at least in the western side of the sound) is doing just fine and dandy like it always has.

It is ****ty, and there is no good solution, especially with so much shut down right now due to Covid; my wife is a homeless outreach coordinator here in WA. A lot of homeless are going to die this winter, as they (Churches) have stopped the "Freezing Nights" program that used to house them when the weather dipped below freezing.

 

[SigurdReginson]

It is ****ty, and there is no good solution, especially with so much shut down right now due to Covid; my wife is a homeless outreach coordinator here in WA. A lot of homeless are going to die this winter, as they (Churches) have stopped the "Freezing Nights" program that used to house them when the weather dipped below freezing.

Yah... Shelters in my area have closed due to covid. This is going to be a rough winter for them... I hope something else is in the pipeline to keep these folks off of the streets then.

 

[icehorse]

How do you view the root cause?

oligarchs

 

[The Hammer]

Yah... Shelters in my area have closed due to covid. This is going to be a rough winter for them... I hope something else is in the pipeline to keep these folks off of the streets then.

There isn't. Not AFAIK. I wish there was. There isn't even enough beds for those that are addicts to get the help they need, regularly Let alone during Covid. Did you know that there are only 14 in-patient detox beds in the entirety of Pierce County. I am pretty sure there are more then 14 homeless people that need to detox, to get back on their feet.

 

[Kenny]

oligarchs

Way too simplistic to have any weight. Covid, which is part of the problem, has nothing to do with oligarchs.

 

[Nakosis]

How do you view the root cause?

Bad government.

How would I fix it? Bring in a horde of capitalist entrepreneurs.

 

[icehorse]

Way too simplistic to have any weight. Covid, which is part of the problem, has nothing to do with oligarchs.

i find that it's usually just a few degrees of separation from most any societal ill we're experiencing, and linking those to some oligarchs (an umbrella term), fouling our world and society. Oligarchs are poisoning EVERYTHING.

So in this case, it is almost certainly the case that massive wealth and income inequality is at play in Seattle.

 

[DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan]

So, with covid in full swing me and a friend of mine decided to go hit up downtown Seattle on a lark. She hadn't really had a chance to kick around there, so I figured it'd make for a fun time.

We show up via the ferry and find that the terminal is completely blocked and rerouted. We walk down the gangplanks onto the main elevated walkway that skips the streets down below into the main city area.

As we walk further in, there is graffiti on everything. Everything; even on multi story buildings. Trash, graffiti, and tents all along the sides of the streets down below as we walk down that elevated walkway. We double back and decide to stay on the shoreline area on Alaskan Way since it looks a little more safe, plus it was getting close to the time we were supposed to go to the aquarium.

There has always been a terrible homeless issue in Seattle, but now I feel like the city has just thrown up their arms and are letting things fester without any real help or structure invested in any way. The place is imploding.

Not many people are out at all due to the day of the week, and covid of course. As we get to the aquarium, we had a really good time. There was lots of stuff to see, and it was worth the money. We then went up to pikes place and grabbed some red bean cakes and cookies from the famous Mee Sum Bakery. We found some fun little shops and enjoyed ourselves.

As soon as we got back onto the ferry, that feeling of oppressing dread slipped away and we made our way back just fine. We had a good time, but dear god... If something doesn't change there soon, I feel like something real bad is gonna unfold there. It's interesting too, since every other place (at least in the western side of the sound) is doing just fine and dandy like it always has.

In the last few years, Vancouver Canada has turned worse and worse and worse every single year, and then I took a cross Canada trip in 2019 and all across Canada the place is falling apart, terrifying in parts, madness, homelessness, drugs, open crime.

This is how it is also across cities in the United States that I've heard reports from, all over, everything is almost turning into a Detroit hell-hole it seems.

I found this nice little place lost in time, living in the past, but even here, there is pointless homelessness and drug abuse going on, but on a very minimal level in comparison to what I saw across Canada in the open in every city I visited. Horrible filth everything, trash everywhere, so much trash laying inside buildings and restaurants like I had never seen in my life. People are laying on the sidewalks and streets in Vancouver as well, and that was a place that was famous for its nice little city and cleanliness even just some years before.

Everywhere it seems like government and administrators are overwhelmed and have just abandoned policies which place an importance on a cities appearance and safety. People in the busses are just crazy, people walking buy just spit on the ground or right in peoples faces, I've seen it all. All this happened right before my eyes in just 10 years since I had visited Vancouver in 2004, then lived there from 2014 to 2019, and even in just those few years it became more of a hell hole every single year, more terrifying, until the last year in 2019 there was some lunatic driving around what looked like a pitch black "rape van" and harassing girls in neighborhoods and no one could stop him, two police blockades and drug busts, an axe murderer who chopped up some old couple for no apparent reason at all except being possessed or something, lunatics wandering everywhere yelling to themselves and screaming "KILL KILL" or "LUCIFER!!!!" I'm not even kidding. Its a freaking nuthouse. I hope it doesn't happen here, and I'm terrified now of the USA, even Hawaii where I used to live was getting worse by the day, and my family is still back there and keeps telling me more crazy stories about all the nutso stuff going on there, tents and trash everywhere, everyone raging, so much violence and crime and drug use, more than ever before, totally corrupt and incompetent police and law enforcement, fires, explosions even, there were even lots of fires, car accidents, and big explosions going on in Vancouver which never even seemed to get reported or anything.

 

[DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan]

Way too simplistic to have any weight. Covid, which is part of the problem, has nothing to do with oligarchs.

Often it seems like an evil spiritual presence is swarming all over the cities. Sometimes you can hear the violence go from one home to another and another, like its moving and making people go nuts one after another. Glass was just exploding, people were running out in the streets, I saw people chasing each other with knives around a car (a couple), that crossroads I lived on was like insanity central or some kind of crazy vortex, there was an accident right in front of my window almost every single day!

 

[Twilight Hue]

oligarchs

Seems the stories of those who live high in ivory towers, have the rest of humanity relegated to living in slums below, is quickly coming true.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Often it seems like an evil spiritual presence is swarming all over the cities. Sometimes you can hear the violence go from one home to another and another, like its moving and making people go nuts one after another. Glass was just exploding, people were running out in the streets, I saw people chasing each other with knives around a car (a couple), that crossroads I lived on was like insanity central or some kind of crazy vortex, there was an accident right in front of my window almost every single day!

wow that's horrifying. I think there may come a point where I want to live as much like a hermit as possible, just so I never risk seeing or thinking about anything like that

 

[Trailblazer]

So, with covid in full swing me and a friend of mine decided to go hit up downtown Seattle on a lark. She hadn't really had a chance to kick around there, so I figured it'd make for a fun time.

We show up via the ferry and find that the terminal is completely blocked and rerouted. We walk down the gangplanks onto the main elevated walkway that skips the streets down below into the main city area.

As we walk further in, there is graffiti on everything. Everything; even on multi story buildings. Trash, graffiti, and tents all along the sides of the streets down below as we walk down that elevated walkway. We double back and decide to stay on the shoreline area on Alaskan Way since it looks a little more safe, plus it was getting close to the time we were supposed to go to the aquarium.

There has always been a terrible homeless issue in Seattle, but now I feel like the city has just thrown up their arms and are letting things fester without any real help or structure invested in any way. The place is imploding.

Not many people are out at all due to the day of the week, and covid of course. As we get to the aquarium, we had a really good time. There was lots of stuff to see, and it was worth the money. We then went up to pikes place and grabbed some red bean cakes and cookies from the famous Mee Sum Bakery. We found some fun little shops and enjoyed ourselves.

As soon as we got back onto the ferry, that feeling of oppressing dread slipped away and we made our way back just fine. We had a good time, but dear god... If something doesn't change there soon, I feel like something real bad is gonna unfold there. It's interesting too, since every other place (at least in the western side of the sound) is doing just fine and dandy like it always has.

That sounds really sad. I never went up to Seattle all the time I have in the state so I have no point of comparison. Covid has had a much bigger impact upon some people than others for sure. Some people have been barely impacted... My boss just announced that he is still flying to Hawaii as usual for his three week November vacation.

 

[PureX]

Bad government.

How would I fix it? Bring in a horde of capitalist entrepreneurs.

How will greed fix anything? Capitalist greed is what corrupted and destroyed effective, compassionate government in the first place.

 

[DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan]

wow that's horrifying. I think there may come a point where I want to live as much like a hermit as possible, just so I never risk seeing or thinking about anything like that

Now that real estate is so expensive almost anywhere, I may have to live sort of out of the way as well, which I am currently, as Prince Edward Island is just a tiny sort of place on the edge of Canada, and then among it, its main city Charlottetown is pretty small and cute overall, and there is lots and lots of country, lots of farm land, open spaces, its very beautiful, I immediately just forced my way and moved here without returning to Vancouver, which is a lot more inconvenient to live out of the way there because you have to cross all sorts of rivers and take lots of ferry's and stuff and the real estate is still often pretty expensive for all the hassle.

This "creeping poverty" and pollution of cities though is seemingly spreading everywhere, as real estate prices and the cost of living and renting and everything are also becoming much higher while people are being paid almost the same amount as always and are less trained or have little skills to really do many jobs or jobs well and few jobs even available so they can't really change jobs or become pretty desperate to keep jobs. I do also think drugs and intoxicants are part of the problem also, as things seemed to get worse in each place as the drugs seemed to increase or even get legalized and opened up, people were just loitering smoking drugs in the opened or drinking alcohol just taking up public benches, doing dumb stuff like going through trash or kicking trash over. A lot of the trash mangling wasn't for food but for collecting bottles and things to make a few cents off of. Its really just a horrible sight seeing what used to be cute and pretty neighborhoods that were very clean, then have wrappers of stuff laying all around in front of homes or on the grass, de-institutionalized severely mentally ill people just wandering around moaning like zombies (maybe they were on drugs even) and disturbing communities and no one is even helping them or can apparently do anything for them, people standing in the middle of roads and yelling at trees or throwing things, people yanking at locked doors of apartment buildings then smashing them with rocks or bricks (happened to my apartment, right next to my window on the ground floor). This is an expensive and neat neighborhood which was full of elderly people and decent people, and then it became just filled with police riding through and getting constant reports of suspicious activity to the point that the scary police were suspicious of me in my bathrobe when I went outside of my apartment for two seconds to check something lol. They bothered me, an obvious resident who lives in the building and was entering and exiting the building in my own patio but can't seem to do a darn thing about this huge assembly of vagabonds that was growing around this once nice seating area where they are openly taking drugs of all sorts right in front of everyone and having big fights and breaking up the fights with each other and right in the main part so you have to cross them to get to the grocery store, or they are wandering around or sitting outside of every place asking for money to buy who knows what with, probably not food, probably drugs or alcohol. They need to be taken out of the cities and neighborhoods and communities by force and given forced treatment, its like their addictions and other problems are an actual disease, they can not be expected to be responsible for themselves or shaping up on their own, their being left to do as they please is making a mess of everything. I was so uncomfortable and traumatized every day going out in Vancouver, 2014 it seemed really great and safe, 15 was fine, 16 a little scarier but fine, 17, whats happening, 18, omg, 19 absolute chaos like the beginning of some post-apocalyptic movie, and who knows what happened now after Covid, the people were also getting worse and worse, tenser and tenser, meaner and meaner. Man, it bothers me and makes me sort of shiver even thinking about it, how bad it felt to even go to the grocery store, how many times I had to give up and turn back because the ways were blocked by people just standing on the roads or sidewalks drunk and dangerous seeming and ready to attack people, and its just this nice little neighborhood, or was, it had beautiful trees and nice grass, and these FREAKS had just spread there so much. That is also why I want to punch the people who support them or that, that crap basically ruined my life and my days repeatedly, it was a terrible pain living under so much stress that at any moment some lunatic could notice my apartment. People tried yanking at the glass door from outside, would put their face right up to the window. I had to keep everything shut and locked down and it was so hot and getting hotter as well a lot of the time, no air flow because I had to keep the place all covered up so that I might not get the attention of the "nomads" wandering through so that some wacky idea might not occur to them. It SUCKED.

 

[DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan]

Also, I'm still paying 1000 dollars a month for that abandoned apartment (which was a special deal since it was given as a favor in an emergency and apartments around there are much more costly while also being smaller than mine), just to hold my stuff until this Covid thing goes away and I can bring it to a (yet to be acquired) house here. I had considered maintaining and keeping an apartment in Vancouver to have a kind of base on two sides of the country to travel to, but now I don't know if that will be necessary or feasible. The thing is, getting an apartment there again for that price would be next to impossible now as they have raised the prices a lot.

 

[Nakosis]

How will greed fix anything? Capitalist greed is what corrupted and destroyed effective, compassionate government in the first place.

Jobs would. Capitalism creates jobs.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Bad government.

How would I fix it? Bring in a horde of capitalist entrepreneurs.

That's part of what caused the problems. All these selfish capitalists buying up tons of low income housing and offices, Flipping them into these sterile Starbucks neighborhoods, and then jacking up the prices. Viola! Gentrification. Now more than 10% of properties lay empty and a bunch of locals got priced out of their homes. The city overall gets poorer while rich capitalists make money on contributing negatively to the zone.