King County Councilman Reagan Dunn wants to bus the homeless out of the area

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn wants to spend $1 million to provide homeless people with bus tickets in order to reunify with their families.

Citing "substantial demand," Dunn is proposing a pilot program dubbed "Homeward Bound." The purpose would be to offer long-distance bus tickets to people living on the streets so they could reconnect with their family and obtain permanent housing.

Of the hundreds of homeless people who responded to the county's most recent one-night count, 77 (9%) said a family reunification program would help them obtain permanent housing. Rental assistance and/or more affordable housing, meanwhile, was the most popular option with 629 saying it would be helpful.

The one-night count found 11,199 people experiencing homelessness, which was an 8% decrease from the previous year. Of those, 84% were living in King County when they became homeless; 5% were living out of state at the time, 4% were in Pierce County, another 4% in Snohomish County, 1% in Thurston County, and 2% elsewhere within Washington state.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/article/should-king-county-bus-the-homeless-out-of-the-area-councilmember-wants-to-test-it/ar-AAH6mRA

If someone really has family who will take them in, fine. Otherwise this just moves the problem elsewhere.

[LisaM]

1. They need to quit knocking down affordable housing.

This is not about building new housing. There's supposedly a high vacancy rate with downtown luxury apartments - and that's all they build, except for those ridiculous apodments, which are overpriced and can only accommodate one person. They aren't building housing for families, and what there is is going under the wrecking ball.

Most of all, we need to stop subsidizing companies that are moving in people making six figures, who are quickly displacing people who already live here, not to mention driving up rents.

Once thing about getting into housing - it's not cheap. Once you've been kicked out of an affordable situation, it's expensive to get back into something new.

We lived in a shabby but affordable rental house for years and years - then six years ago, they jacked up the rent, then they kicked us out, fixed it up, and rented it for a much higher rate. Eventually they sold it. It was gut-wrenching to move out of a place we'd been for 18 years (most of it quite affordable), and leave our little house with a basement and yard, into a smaller and much more expensive apartment. Our life is much more costly now, though we can manage it (just don't put as much money aside for a nest egg or emergencies), but not everyone can do that.

[BBG]

2. The Market is Driving

Supply and demand and all that rot. As long as people demand housing and back their demand with higher premiums then there will be incentives to knock down affordable housing and rebuild with more units. House up the street has been taken down and five townhouses are being built in replacement. House next door with a quasi-legal duplex sold last summer for $1.2M and will probably go tear down next summer to be replaced by 4 or 5 town houses at $800K each (or more). $800K is more affordable than $1.2M. It’s a conundrum that ends with a paradigm shift, density increases and we damn sure ain’t in Kansas Toto.

[LisaM]

3. I don't like density. I've consistently had to move into smaller, denser housing.

I absolutely hate it, it's depressing, I feel cramped, I don't have enough room for my books, and i'm miserable a lot of the time. I feel quite trapped. We moved from a four bedroom house (belonged to my SO's grandmother, it was sold a few years after she died), into a two-bedroom apartment, that we also had to leave because the landlady was selling, then into our small one-bedroom house, now we are in an apartment and it's not even a bad apartment, but I'm going crazy in it. I have been a faithful, good citizen, tax-paying, local shopping resident for a long time, and I feel marginalized and displaced. Moving out of the city at this point is not a good option for a variety of reasons, but I also don't feel that I should have to just so some 125K a year tech bro can come in and live in some fancy apartment where his high-end appliances sit unused while he orders meals from GrubHub and won't shop locally.

There has got to be some middle ground. Everyone in Seattle seems unhappy at the moment. The growth and displacement are too fast. It needs to be managed, and no one will stand up to the tech companies. No one!!

[BBG]

4. It Ain't Easy

The sad thing is Seattle was bound to evolve even as it feels so harsh. The environment is too welcoming albeit with nine plus months of moisture. We moved here almost twenty years ago and can be counted as contributing to the growth but darn it, it was better than relocating to New Jersey. And with all the problems and costs, financial and emotional, it still beats most anyplace I have ever lived. Even factoring in the dampness.

[LisaM]

5. I just want out. It's a different place than it was.

I've been here a little longer than you have, but it was still essentially a middle-class city with a good union vibe to it. There was a pretty thriving theatre scene (it's about half what it was, and now a lot of it's Broadway stuff on tour, not local). The little neighborhood restaurants and bars are vanishing. I've counted thirty-five little lunch spots downtown that I used to go to (to be fair, it includes a food court) that are gone. A lot of downtown shopping is gone. My bus routes have been slashed to the point that I cannot get safely home from the theatre on public transit (being a union advocate, I don't take Uber, I'll take a cab, but they don't hang around outside like they used to after a show). There is only one bookstore (other than used) in the downtown core and it's a chain. Tula's Jazz club is being forced out, even though they are doing great business. Historic building are being knocked down everywhere with no protection by city officials. It's difficult to walk down the sidewalk - Jump bikes flying by, I always have to look around me when I step out of my building, I'm so worried about being crashed into.

And these newcomers do not look happy to me. Other than making money, I don't see what attracts them to Seattle. They don't seem to care about the working class, they don't seem like music lovers or theatre goers, they clearly wouldn't support a new bookstore if it opened up downtown. I just don't get it. If I was young and just starting out, I don't think I'd like to come here. I think about that a lot, trying to put myself into the shoes of someone who's just hatched. Who would I be? What would I like? I like to think I'd still be bookish and sociable and enjoy going out to a pub to listen to music or just talk, but I don't know. It is depressing, though, because I see no effort being made to keep a decent lifestyle for people who contributed and made Seattle the thriving city it was. I don't think it's right to knock people to the curb. That's not progress. A progressive, liberal atmosphere would find a way to include everyone, but that's not the case here.