A couple weeks ago there was a “guest” op-ed in the Seattle Times that I’ve been wanting to comment on written by someone in the local aviation industry with the exhausting headline “I shouldn’t fear for my safety on a walk from the ferry to the Pioneer Square light-rail station.” Well, no he shouldn’t, and most people don’t. This person wrote about the increasingly “perilous” journey to the Pioneer Square light-rail station from the ferry terminal, thanks to the increase in the homeless population under the viaduct, and then the panhandlers along First and Second Avenue.
He says he eventually chose to take the pedestrian bridge that took him around Pioneer Square, onto Yesler Way. Of course, there were “hazards” to taking this route as well. The “plethora of homeless people, the mini-tent cities and the crime rate of Pioneer Square even then made it uncomfortable and possibly unsafe to walk from the Pioneer Square Station to the ferry on my returns especially after dark.” He complained of “five homeless persons loitering, which would have required running a gauntlet. No thank you.”
Naturally he is not “denigrating” those who are homeless, or ignoring their “plight.” Well, of course he is, or he wouldn’t be writing this whiny piece that the Seattle Times in all its “wisdom” chose to publish. “No, this is about the city of Seattle’s refusal to make the city safe, or even feel safe, not only for people transiting even a few blocks but for the city council’s own constituency.” He goes on to say that Seattle is failing “miserably” to make people like him who do not live in Seattle feel “safe,” and that means getting rid of the homeless people who make people like him feel “uncomfortable.”
Now, I had lived near downtown Seattle for 10 years—and probably still would if I could afford it—and currently work in downtown Seattle for the past four years, and feeling “safe” has never really been an issue, ever. Yeah, stuff happens, like that shooting on Third Avenue last year in front of the McDonald’s, but traffic there just went on as usual as if nothing happened. First and Second Avenues became places for people to just “hang out” because over the past few decades all the record and computer software stores, used book and adult video stores, the Radio Shacks and the discount shoe stores of the world just closed up. Back in the 1990s, when I got bored and couldn’t get any sleep, I’d just take a walk into downtown; there was always something open, even all-night fast food restaurants. That’s not true now, of course. People used to say that shopping malls were responsible for shuttering “mom and pop” operations; now everyone is under threat from Amazon.
The point here is that there has been a lot of “dead space” in the “core” commercial areas of Seattle for a long time, and it was inevitable they are going to be filled by riff-raff with nothing to do, including the homeless, in a city where it is nearly impossible to find affordable housing if you make less than a $100,000 a year. You get used to seeing it, you live with it. If you don’t want to be a “victim” of it, you just keep walking and don’t look “lost,” give people “mean” looks and don’t engage them in conversation if they seem deranged.
In all the years I’ve been here, the only time I was the victim of a crime was not in Seattle, but on an empty road at 3AM in Kent. I was walking to a bus stop on my way to a job at the airport, when some guy just came out of nowhere, walked up and sucker-punched me, told me to “stay down” and unknowingly ripped off what was my airport ID badge from around my neck, and then ran off to a waiting car and drove off. I figured this must have been some gang “initiation.” I actually felt more victimized by the people at the airport ID office, who did not believe my story and insisted I pay the $250 replacement fee for “lost” badges, which I refused to do. I ended up losing two weeks of pay standing my ground before my supervisor accepted my story and told me that someone had anonymously returned my badge two days after the theft in an unmarked envelope.
Anyways, Pioneer Square is one of the oldest parts of Seattle and looks it. There are a few new office buildings and apartments along the peripheries, but the fact that it looks run down rather than “quaint” is part of why to some people it looks “unsafe.” Yes, there are quite a few tents to be found and riff-raff hanging out, but it is one thing to be “scared,” and another to just be “annoyed” by them or their appearance. Just because “bums” are hanging around doesn’t mean they are panhandlers; panhandlers mostly disappeared in downtown Seattle during the pandemic, because there were fewer people to panhandle from. The only panhandlers I see are in front of both QFC stores in Capitol Hill, but most people just ignore them.
The problem with this op-ed for me is that despite his disclaimer about not wanting to demonize homeless people, that is exactly what he was doing in expressing a fear for his “safety” having to walk past them or even being "forced" to acknowledge their presence. It’s like how I feel when I am walking in the rain and someone reacts to me in some fearful paranoid way; these people don’t even stop to think for one second how I am feeling. They are only concerned about their own petty paranoid selves.
Most people who live or work in Seattle are used to the presence of homeless people; maybe that is a bad thing, but for whom? This guy complains about his “safety,” but what about theirs? At least he has a “safe” place to go at night. As I pointed out the other day, “liberal” cities like Seattle are filled with people who talk a “caring” game, but when it comes to actually following through, they are all for it only for as long as the solutions are not put in their own “backyards”—and that is how about everyone feels. Thus if you don’t want to be a part of the solution, then why be a hypocrite and complain about the presence of homeless and others in places you don’t actually live in and they are supposed to be someone’ else’s problem? What did Amazon do when the city proposed a “head tax” to get people off the street? They abandoned the brand-spanking new downtown office building built just for them.
Well then, what about all the crime? After reading the op-ed, I decided to the check out the Seattle 911 response dispatch data for the “primetime” of “crimetime” between 10 PM and 3 AM during the evening of October 30-31. This graphic showed the origin of 911 calls in or around downtown Seattle that night:
The vast majority of 911 calls, indicated here as “?” or a person walking, were the following: Trespass (likely vagrants sleeping on business property), “suspicious” persons or cars, “disturbances,” noise complaints, a “car prowl,” and a “mental health” complaint. There was one reported assault, a shoplifting and two “burglaries” in an “unoccupied structure”; note that “burglary” is entering a building with the “intent” of the theft, even if the building is in fact empty. Note also that the assault did not occur in Pioneer Square, but north of downtown, and the location of the reported burglaries and the reported shoplifting (as indicated by the figures in the hat) occurred south of Pioneer Square, in the Chinatown/International District south of Jackson Street, as made more obvious here:
Being “safe” and feeling “safe” are too different things. “Safety” is quite often more a state of mind than it is a physical state. If you are a naturally paranoid, fearful and conceited type, of course you are not going to like to be around people who are not your “type.” While most people have been a victim of a crime, very few have been so by people that make them “uncomfortable” on their way to or from work, but by people living in their own neighborhoods.
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