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City council member Mike O’Brien has received hundreds of emails vehemently opposing his proposal to exempt some people living in their cars or RVs from the city’s parking scofflaw ordinance. (He has also received a handful of positive responses.) Currently, cars or RVs that remain in one place for more than 72 hours, or whose owners have too many unpaid parking tickets, can be impounded and towed, leaving people who live in their vehicles without even the inadequate shelter of an RV or car. Under O’Brien’s proposal, people who agree to participate in a new “vehicular residence program” aimed at putting them on a path to permanent housing would be exempt from most parking enforcement except when they pose a threat to public safety or block access to the public right-of-way.

The proposal attempts to accomplish a few goals. One, it acknowledges the fact that people who are desperate enough to live in their vehicles can’t afford to pay their parking tickets or, in some cases, get their vehicles up and running. Two, it effectively decriminalizes vehicular living at a time when there is nowhere close to enough permanent housing for the thousands of people experiencing homelessness in Seattle. And three, it recognizes the plain reality that people are better off with some shelter than with none—homeless people living in their vehicles will not suddenly become housed people if the city takes their vehicles away; rather, they’ll just take their place among the thousands of people already sleeping outdoors, in tents, or on the floors of temporary shelters in one of the richest cities in the nation.

Anyway, from the emails O’Brien has been receiving—which I obtained through a public records request—you would think the city was proposing to open the jails and let the inmates roam freely through the streets of single-family Seattle neighborhoods.

Good God, it’s bad enough we are Freeattle are you trying to ruin neighborhoods and tourism? I do not care if these druggies and tweakers have homes. They don’t want to work, they just want to do their thing and you’re coddling them.

I just saw your latest bullshit. I am writing you as a citizen who will also be more than willing to file suit against you and the council for allowing methheads, heroine addicts and sexual abusers from living in derelict vehicles, dumping their trash and needles and precluding my children from being safely able to walk to and enjoy our city.

I am an honest, tax paying citizen. I work…I contribute to society and yet I have to pay when my parking meter expires. It almost makes a person want to quit their job, start shooting up heroin, start a meth lab, steal from neighborhood cars and the CITY WILL LET YOU PARK WHEREVER YOU WANT & THE AVERAGE PERSON BE DAMNED.

This proposal is insanity at its highest level!!! How about ticket & tow for parking illegally (according to the LAW!),arrest the heroin addicts for illegal possession of a controlled substance, clean up the rolling meth labs, and make them clean up their own trash and feces and not the beleaguered city workers? I would love to see these rolling meth labs, heroin dens and filthmobiles roll up and park in front all your houses. Because according to this proposed ordinance they would be allowed to do it and since it can’t be towed or ticketed the RV occupants can stay there as long as they “seek help”? ARE YOU SERIOUS?

A lot of people threatened to do something that none of them will ever actually do: Sell their comfortable single-family houses and move into their cars.

What would prevent anyone from just buying a vehicle and living rent/hassle free because we are now allowing that (say a google employee buying a nice RV and parking in Fremont), because that’s what I would do if I was fresh out of college and moving to this expensive city for a job – why pay rent if the city permits long-term parking for the purpose of housing?

Go along the Shilshole ave yourself and see the disgusting RVs parked along the side of the road. Visitors to the city take these roads often and thats what they see. A run down, broken disgusting RV parked in premium locations around Ballard.

So if this horrible idea actually passes, what is stopping me from instead buying and over priced house in the area, buy a run down RV and just move it around the city to places like Golden Gardens, boat ramps, Alki Beach and maybe see how the people of Laurlhurst are doing, and enjoy nice views and never have to pay taxes again?

If this goes through, I’m selling my home and buying a top of the line RV and living on Alki or the best view areas in Seattle. I will also buy additional RVs and rent them out as AirBnBs.

Others did the thing Seattleites always do—they complained about parking.

All people wanting to avoid parking issues will sign up for the program.

If this proposal goes through, expect a class action suit against the city by all of those who receive parking tickets. Figure out a different solution, proposing discriminatory Laws will not help.

I’ve made a lifestyle choice too: I decided when I became an adult that I would take care of myself. I would pay my own rent, or own my own home. I would go to work every day to help support my family. I would pay my taxes, and vote for Democrats so that more citizens could benefit from all our tax money. I also made a choice NOT to live in an RV encampment, but in a modest, somewhat diverse neighborhood, which will not have a single parking place left if this scheme of yours goes into effect.

[Redacted] Street, my street, will be LINED with RVs, and we will listen to the sound of generators night and day. There will be no parking left for tax-paying residents, their families, or visitors.

Many seemed to believe that people who live in cars and RVs just prefer being homeless, despite the fact that in every survey, people experiencing homelessness overwhelmingly say what they want is a home.

I’ve been reading about this initiative and it seems you’re missing that most of the people who live in those vehicles live there because they want to, or rather, they are not willing to participate in the normal societal processes.

We should on the contrary, constantly make their life in the cars extremely uncomfortable and leave them just two choices — leave the city or actually work on their integration in the society. Those who are actually on down-low and want to re-integrate should be helped and will be willing to accept the help. The professional homeless, junkies and alcoholics should not be encouraged to live like this in our city.

Some argued that throwing homeless people in jail might teach them a lesson about paying their parking tickets.

This will attract RV’s and car campers to Seattle. The parking rules are fine the way they are. What they need is to really enforce them, people need consequences like maybe jail?

Others resorted to my favorite red-herring argument: If you think RVs are so great, how would you like it if someone parked one in YOUR driveway?

STOP SCREWING us hard paying homeowners. I don’t see any of you city council members take a homeless person into your home or letting them park in your driveway.

Why the f*ck should I have to have a homeless vehicle/person in front of my house harrassing my kids & wife, piling up their drugs/garbage and waiting for me to go to work so they can break into my house?????

Most of these homeless, even if they were drug free, don’t have the skills to earn enough to pay the ridiculous rents in Seattle.

STOP AND GRABBING MONEY FROM HOMEOWNERS AND JUST LET THE HOMELESS LEAVE THE CITY.

Really sucks when the city council rams the homeless down the throats of tax paying homeowners.

How about you guys adopting some homeless into your spare bedrooms and in front of Your houses??

And harrassing your childen and wife when they’re parked in front of your house!! YaH!!!

Lowering our lifestyle to cater to them harms us. Do you not see this? Would you tolerate an filthy, shabby RV parked in your driveway? Would you want to try to use the library or a playground by stepping over sleeping bodies with needles and alcohol scattered around them? I have personally experienced this along with foul language and drug dealing. This is truly an emergency! If DOT, the parks or police dept can’t maintain order then the National Guard should be called out. I am serious! I’ve heard from countless people who are visit Seattle and are so disgusted that they vow to never return to experience this filth again.

Finally, some saw the proposal as part of a larger conspiracy: drive down property values so that land can be sold cheaply to developers so that [???]. Which might hold water (actually, no, it wouldn’t) if single family homeowners’ property values had not doubled in the past five years, and appreciated 13 percent in the last year alone.

Perhaps you’re mining for taxpayers, or voters for 2019? Or perhaps you hope that a citywide Intentional Blight™ will free up more single-family homes for redevelopment? Or perhaps you’re just using hate-baiting tactics because you want to paint your district and beyond in broad strokes as folks who lack compassion for our homeless neighbors. Perhaps you have another upzone planned. You has just declared war on families and children. It’s a shame we’re not the demographic you’re looking for. There will be hell to pay.

Tell me, is this the following intention true or false?

IT IS ALL ABOUT PASSING THE $469 MILLION HOMELESS TAX Mike O’Brien and the homeless services advocates who wrote the vehicular residence legislation have 1 goal: make homelessness worse in Seattle so they can pass the $469 million King County homeless tax.

Interestingly, the most contentious element of O’Brien’s proposal inside city hall may not be the provision exempting homeless people from parking tickets that has his constituents so worked up, but a separate “safe parking program” that would designate between 30 and 50 small lots across the city as safe havens for between 300 and 500 vehicles. Apart from the practical challenges such a widespread, highly decentralized program would present, council member Tim Burgess says he and other council members are concerned that such a “policy of accommodation” might conflict with the city’s new push to move people into housing as quickly as possible rather than allowing them to stay on the streets.