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| Economy |
| Seattle is putting fences under its bridges to keep campers out ‐ and some say that's wrong |
| 2018-02-08 |
He went back Tuesday, and those tents were gone. The underpass was fenced off, and workers were drilling holes to put up a 10-foot-high spiked fence to prevent homeless people from camping there. The price tag on this fencing: $100,000 for both sides of Northwest Leary Way at the Ballard Bridge. That money, O’Brien reasoned, could have housed those five households in apartments for a year. |
| Posted by:746 |
| #9 Where will the homeless smoke legal pot now? |
| Posted by: Woodrow 2018-02-08 18:27 |
| #8 Fences make good neighbors andkeep shit, filth, and needles from under my bridges. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2018-02-08 15:29 |
| #7 estimated 5,500 unsheltered homeless people That's only 5500 compassionate households opening one stall of their 2.5 stall garages. Give them a tax break in recompense. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2018-02-08 12:04 |
| #6 Back in the early 90's a reporter for one of the Knoxville papers did a story about what it was like to be homeless for a month. He decided to go out for a month and live off the land as it were. What he discovered was that there was SO MUCH help available, that you had to want to sleep under bridges and such. The reason is, the shelters and other places won't support their addictions so they won't stay there. They prefer to get drunk and sleep under the bridge. The reporter said he was flat out stunned how much assistance there was to find. Churches and civic groups had beds, food, showers, etc there but the homeless refuse such help. Honestly, institutionalizing them is the only real solution that might lead to them becoming productive citizens again. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2018-02-08 11:47 |
| #5 When Mike O’Brien, Ballard’s Seattle City Council member, biked up the Ballard Bridge But of course he did - don't want to drive those fossil-fuel carbon belching vehicles! |
| Posted by: Raj 2018-02-08 09:42 |
| #4 have you no compassion? Call me a Darwinist. I do believe in helping my fellow man, but only if he is willing to also help himself. If he has no interest in the latter, I have no interest in the former. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2018-02-08 08:32 |
| #3 "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread." -Anatole France |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2018-02-08 07:42 |
| #2 Not to mention the question of where to house these people for the remaining decades of their lives. But, but, but, Anguper Hupomosing9418 - have you no compassion? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2018-02-08 06:56 |
| #1 "...could have housed those five households in apartments for a year." Not sure how a homeless "household" can be said to even exist. Not to mention the question of where to house these people for the remaining decades of their lives. What we have here is a failure to think. One solution for Seattle is to have their housing prices double again, in the same way that trees have been known to grow to the sky. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2018-02-08 06:33 |