There was a ruckus in Seattle recently concerning the King County Council plan to expand the Salvation Army homeless shelter in the SODO district of the city. This isn’t to be confused with the Union Gospel Mission north of it, which is in a congested area and has no ability to expand to meet the apparently growing homeless population. The SODO district—a reference to the area south of the former King Dome—is non-residential, mostly a large “business park” type place housed in mostly older buildings, and it seemed to be the most “ideal” place to expand shelter capacity:
We see here that the King County proposal was rather impressive; currently there is just the one structure, but as this image shows, the intention was to add a building for temporary emergency shelter (the “BH” extension), a new micro-modular shelter that gives people a bit of privacy instead of a barracks-type environment, and a storage facility. Who would be against this, when people complain about homeless people camped out in business stairwells and doorways, “unsightly” tent cities here and there, and the crime the homeless allegedly bring?
Well, it seems those would be the kind folks who live in the International (Chinatown) District:
As I’ve been mentioned before, I think it is kind of hypocritical for Asians to claim to be the victims of racism, especially when they invaded the capitol building in Olympia to oppose the legislature’s vote to overturn the anti-affirmative action I-200, and you see here the guy with the Tammy Morales placard, which I think is racial targeting because she obviously isn’t the only one who supported the expansion; of course she is Hispanic and everyone can feel good about being racist against a Hispanic.
It is also a bit hypocritical because these people also complained about seeing homeless people on their streets, and crime; well, if they want them off their streets, then why are they opposing the expansion? It doesn’t make sense. The protesters also claim that the International District has done more than its share for homeless people, which isn’t true because as this image shows, there are no social—let alone homeless—services in the International District:
They just don't like the fact that the city and county's main services hubs happen to be too "close." The SODO shelter is admittedly just south of Dearborn Street, which is the southern border of the International District. But then again I never go into the I-District because it just seems to be a place where if you are not one of “them,” they don’t want you there, and that is the kind of attitude that I think was driving the protest.
To the “surprise” of even the protest leaders, the King County Council backed down, with no back-up location contemplated. I frankly think this was a cowardly, foolish move on the part of the council; the planned expansion was a move in the right direction to address the homeless problem, and this wasn’t actually in the International District at all. The residents there could hardly say they would be worse off for it, probably better if it got more of the people they were complaining about off their streets.
In the meantime, we are told that King County is ditching the “point in time” method of counting the homeless for local purposes, since it is a one-night count and likely misses a lot of people who conceal themselves in abandoned buildings or in the woods who don’t want to be found. The “respondent-driven sampling” method records three times the number of homeless than the PIT count, because it uses a number of methods to entice the homeless to appear to be counted, or conducts interviews with people who know where other people are camped-out that might be missed.
The problem of chronic homelessness persists, and because of some people who just don’t like people who are not like them, we won’t see any additional shelter for them. While this image suggests that there are a lot of homeless shelters around…
…that isn’t really the case; most of these are either just temporary transition shelters, targeted to “safe” people like senior citizens, women and/or children, or providing services not involving shelter. With affordable housing still a big problem everywhere in King County, even the “cheaper” solutions to house the majority of homeless is hard to find, and still harder to find the "want to" to fix.
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