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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [BCtriguy1] [ In reply to ]
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The opiate problem accounts for a large portion of the increased homeless population in recent years.

The lack of willingness to work: opiates.
The desire to stay in high pop city centers even though they can't afford the housing? Because that's where the drug supply is easiest. And high population density is better for petty crime to support habits. And you mostly don't need a car.

Attack the opiate problem and homelessness will decrease.
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [velocomp] [ In reply to ]
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Where's the great weather, doesn't it rain all the time?

I just looked on Google and it's ranked 7th, but the cities ahead of Seattle are places where you can have a beautiful day, a downpour for 15 minutes and then a beautiful day. I don't think Seattle is like that.

Rain might not be a big deal when you are in your office or at home, but when home is a cardboard box on a subway grate, rain is a problem!

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''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [BCtriguy1] [ In reply to ]
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BCtriguy1 wrote:
CaptainCanada wrote:
BCtriguy1 wrote:
CaptainCanada wrote:
velocomp wrote:
getcereal wrote:
Duffy wrote:
Quote:
Really pathetic, the progressive and their good intentions...


I don’t think they have good intentions.


Good intentions to make them selves feel good?

Any time you marginalize or make anything acceptable, you can expect to see a lot more of it. It really is that simple. Just like calories in vs calories out in weight loss.

So then you have to ask yourself what is reasonable. You can't outlaw homelessness, but you can criminalize panhandlng, camping in public areas, etc. to dissuade people from doing that in your city.

Sure you can. Starve those fuckers! If they want to sleep, make them sleep on pavement!

Any other “Modest Proposals”, Mr Swift?

I'm not sure how much you notice Victoria's homeless problem in your area, but, it is a pretty big deal downtown, much like Seattle. And, like Seattle, we have a hard, hard left leaning (completely tipping over, actually) council and mayor who seem to just invite more and more homeless people and their activity and behavior to the city with their policies.

People bitch about being cold hearted, but, Im not sure how a municipality of 80,000 can solve a country of 35,000,000's homeless problem. So, yes, enforce the fucking laws.

As much as I hate adding to the federal government,I feel the only way to fairly address this is make it a federal issue and hit other provinces in the pocketbook for not having their own resources to deal with their share of the homeless.

Oh I know it’s a problem. It’s a pretty major problem for sure.

But making life harder for homeless people doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. Do I want someone to piss and shit on the sidewalk or camp in our parks? Of course not, but where can they go? It’s not like merchants welcome them. They can’t afford, or don’t have the wherewithal to find accommodation. So the answer is to arrest them when they poop?

Someone else accuse me of having a “typical lefty reaction” to their post. I am not saying we have to cater to people’s every need. But the vast majority of homeless are either mentally ill or addicted to drugs. We don’t want to fund mental health services or drug addiction services properly. So what’s the alternative? Arresting them and imposing fines they can’t pay anyway? Prison? “Camps”?

Tough love does not work. Being practical is not “left wing”. We require massive funding increases in mental health outreach and drug addiction treatment centres and job training programs and low income housing. Way better to spend money on those things than more policing and more prisons.

I was downtown the other day and had to buy a coffee at a Starbucks because I was prairie dogging. Imagine how humiliating it is to be in that situation without the means to even buy a coffee so you can take a dump.

But what is practical for a city of 80,000 to do? Offer housing and treatment, when no other communities are doing anything because they don't have this problem (because their homeless come here...)? If you start offering services, or simply not enforcing the law, you invite more of this behavior, at levels we simply cannot afford to keep up with.

I don't like watching people needlessly suffer. But dude, I lived next to downtown's tent City for a couple of years. Fuck those people. That experience more or less killed my compassion for most of the people living there. I endured thousands of dollars worth of theft over that period. My truck was broken in to 7 times in six years. Human shit was on the sidewalks. People were having bad meth trips right by our bedroom window. Tent City residents would physically threaten people walking by. Then it cost the city $250,000 to dig up the whole park because it had turned in to a biohazard area. Fuck those people. They do not want help, and most of them choose to live like animals.

I know there are people out there who genuinely want help and can benefit from social programs, housing, job training, etc. I feel for them. If I had a way to find those people and help them, I would, because it would be worth it to turn them in to productive members of society. I don't think most homeless people fell in to that category.

I have actually tried hiring a few homeless or near homeless people, at above market wages, and offered to teach them some construction skills so they could find a career in the trades. The result was I was stolen from, they wouldn't show up, etc. It was just a total waste of time and energy.

Yeah, that all sucks.

I disagree that “most of them choose to live like animals”. Most of them are addicts. Addiction is a disease. My only thought/solution is to treat the entire package like a disease. If homelessness is symptom of drug addiction then treat the symptom as a medical issue. Fund mandatory drug treatment programs. Fund voluntary drug treatment programs.

Don’t want shit on the street? Fund public washrooms. Will they get wrecked? Probably. Then fix them. It’s still cheaper than sending all these people to jail.

===============
Proud member of the MSF (Maple Syrup Mafia)
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [CaptainCanada] [ In reply to ]
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Just replying to the last post with current events and another viewpoint.


As the cries to “get tough” on Seattle’s sprawling homeless camps grow louder, lost in the din is a court ruling Monday that said: Sorry. Not going to be that simple.
It seemed everyone was either too busy howling or defending the status quo to notice it.
Even if cities like Seattle were to try to broadly enforce no trespassing laws to clear out all those people living in greenbelts and under bridges, it could be unconstitutional, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found.
In an “en banc” ruling — meaning all 23 judges were eligible to vote — the judges found that lying down to sleep is so fundamental and life-sustaining that cities can’t bar people from doing it on public property, unless there’s somewhere else provided, indoors, for the people to go.
“The court said that people experiencing homelessness cannot be punished for sleeping or sheltering on the streets in the absence of alternatives,” one advocacy group that brought the Idaho case summed up Monday. The group noted it applies to all the Western states in the circuit, which includes Washington.


https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/court-pours-cold-dose-of-reality-on-seattles-hot-homelessness-debate/?fbclid=IwAR2ZAMbd56rX7rbYFHb6OH_cj8dhfDyNpHM4RGOKFUHgGolSG6KfYF5_VkM



I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.
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Post deleted by spudone [ In reply to ]
Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [spudone] [ In reply to ]
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spudone wrote:
I guarantee you Seattle could take probably 80%+ of their homeless off the streets by just arresting them for the crimes they are already committing out in the open.

But it isn't that simple. And earlier we were discussing how much money they spend on this issue. Housing 80% of them in jail would probably cost more than building them a house and sending them to college. It just isn't a practical solution and neither of those are going to work.

And that really goes tot he heart of this, and not just in Seattle. It is a lot easier seeing why none of the solutions proposed will work than coming up with any solution that will have a meaningful impact. Getting humans to do things they don't want to do is not easy.

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.
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Post deleted by spudone [ In reply to ]
Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [spudone] [ In reply to ]
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I live in Victoria, which is a 90 min ferry ride from Vancouver. We have a smaller version of Vancouvers problem but it is very much out in the open. One of the roads going in to downtown passes by a popular local shelter and needle exchange. The whole block has been taken over by zombies. There is usually a crowd of 20-30 junkies around the area. When you drive by, you see people using in the streets, passed out, having a bad trip, there a permanent cop presence there but they can only do so much. The adjacent park is more or less unused by anyone but junkies now.

A few blocks away is a highly used sports field. Before any team uses it they have to do a needle sweep of the field. Kids teams play there every weekend.

In Vancouver it's more dramatic as the area where junkies congregate is much larger and it's a couple blocks away from some very upscale bars, restaurants, luxury condos, etc. More then a few times I have stepped out of a nice bar at 2am or so and walked in the wrong direction trying to get a cab home. You cross one street, and suddenly it's like you are walking through a set of the walking dead. It's not necessarily unsafe to walk through as it's not like there is a gang problem or gun violence to worry about but it sure is creepy.

The heroin problem is absolutely massive.

ETA: I find it odd how our city leadership is spending millions on a mass cycling lane network around the city... Yet doing nothing to solve the fact that, if you lock a semi decent bike up anywhere downtown it or parts of it will be stolen in under 5 minutes and sold for drug money.

Long Chile was a silly place.
Last edited by: BCtriguy1: Apr 14, 19 8:51
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Post deleted by spudone [ In reply to ]
Last edited by: spudone: Apr 14, 19 10:04
Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [spudone] [ In reply to ]
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Absolutely re: addiction. It turns people in to incredibly selfish zombies. It's all about the next fix. They do not think like rational people.

My issue with needle exchanges is they are not exchanges but give aways. There is no incentive to bring the needles back so they end up everywhere in the community. I would think a program that paid addicts $1 for every used needle they brought back would see higher functioning addicts cleaning up and result in less danger to the surrounding community.

Long Chile was a silly place.
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [BCtriguy1] [ In reply to ]
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https://www.seattletimes.com/...resence-in-bellevue/

Amazon plans to build the tallest building in Bellevue for 4,000 employees.
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Post deleted by spudone [ In reply to ]
Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [spudone] [ In reply to ]
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https://mynorthwest.com/...tep-abandon-seattle/

The exodus is happening sooner than expected.
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [davec] [ In reply to ]
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One could make the argument the people Amazon employed helped Seattle become what company executives now loathe.
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [davec] [ In reply to ]
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They are about half finished with their new building here in Nashville - their "Operations Center of Excellence", and have hired 1,000 people thus far (out of a proposed 5,000).

clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [ironclm] [ In reply to ]
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HQ2 is across the street from my office and is going up faster than I expected.
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [TimeIsUp] [ In reply to ]
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Bellevue is not even an outer suburb.
That is hardly a big move.

The fact that Amazon is moving people and assets to different areas within metro Seattle- seems to imply a greater commitment to the Seattle area not the oposite.
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [davec] [ In reply to ]
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New office is not a forever proposition. Two year lease with ten two-year options.
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [torrey] [ In reply to ]
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torrey wrote:
HQ2 is across the street from my office and is going up faster than I expected.

I was a little surprised at how fast it's gone up. Broadwest also. I wish we were in the CapView area instead of downtown. CapView is closer to my house and easier to get to.

clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [Velocibuddha] [ In reply to ]
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But....Bellevue is its own city and has its own city council and tax structure. Amazon is saying "we like the area, but screw you Seattle City Council." With how bad the traffic is, I think you will see many of the people that work at the Seattle campus move to Bellevue when their jobs move there. That will be a another f#ck you to the city council and a further drag on their tax revenue in a town that is struggling with social issues. Belltown is going to look a lot different in a few years.
Last edited by: sonofdad: Sep 10, 20 13:12
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Re: And Seattle wonders why Amazon is looking for a HQ2 [Velocibuddha] [ In reply to ]
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Velocibuddha wrote:
Bellevue is not even an outer suburb.
That is hardly a big move.

The fact that Amazon is moving people and assets to different areas within metro Seattle- seems to imply a greater commitment to the Seattle area not the oposite.

Bellevue is a city with a population of 145,000.

Amazon is taking their toys and moving next door and taking their tax base with them.

Close enough that Seattle will see everyday what they have lost.
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