By Erica C. Barnett
Saul Spady—Dick’s Burgers scion, anti-tax election activist (twice over), and KIRO radio fill-in host—has filed an initiative that would criminalize “unauthorized camping and storage of personal property” in unincorporated King County. The proposal, which Spady has dubbed “the Compassionate Public Safety Act,” would make sleeping outdoors or “storing” property in public a misdemeanor; modeled after a similar total sleeping ban in Burien, the initiative would give police power to arrest people who fall asleep in public.
The ballot language, approved by the King County Prosecutor’s Office, says the measure “would not be enforced when overnight shelter is unavailable,” then lists exceptions to that rule that would allow police to make arrests if they determine the person sleeping “poses a substantial danger to any person, an immediate threat and/or risk of harm to public health or safety, or a disruption to vital government services.”
These carveouts are similar to the exemptions included in Seattle’s official policy on encampments, which guarantees unsheltered people 72 hours’ notice before a sweep unless they or their belongings constitute an “immediate hazard or obstruction.” For years, the city has interpreted that exemption very broadly to allow sweeps of tents in public spaces, including parks, sidewalks, and planting strips—basically, anywhere housed people might complain about the presence of homeless people.
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Spady did not respond to a request for an interview. In a press release announcing the initiative and the creation of a new group called the Quality of Life Coalition earlier this month, initiative supporter and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said, “As an avowed independent and music fan, I know the world is coming to Seattle looking for the soul of our music scene and quite often they find graffiti, addiction and in-action [sic]. … [This is the first step toward making King County safe, livable, and worthy of our incredible cultural legacy I’m proud to be a part of.”
The Quality of Life Coalition also plans to propose an initiative that would force anyone who “commits three crimes linked to addiction, such as OD’ing, theft, or public drug use” (note: overdosing is not a crime) into mandatory six-month rehab, and one that would impose mandatory five-year jail sentences for any drug dealer who “is not an addict.”
Sounds nuts to you, maybe, even logistically impossible—how are dealers supposed to prove they’re addicted, exactly, and how would King County jails handle the influx of low-level dealers who’d get swept up in such a law? But it’s not much different from the policy City Attorney Ann Davison endorsed toward drug users last year, saying that anyone who overdoses three times should be arrested and thrown in jail. Spady’s group is collecting signatures now.
Noted libertarian and long wealth-pampered Krist Novoselic cries waah waah waah because Seattle hasn’t “solved” graffiti and addiction, and this is so because it contains too many “do-gooders.” The rest of the city looks on curiously, thinking such a person would be well-traveled and realizes that these problems have not been “solved” anywhere in the world (even under formal police states), and that Seattle actually looks relatively good in comparison.
The onlookers try to figure out what Novoselic’s deal might be, landing on said pampered wealth of many decades (let’s face it: the wealthy are never simply told “no” anymore, regardless of how irrational they get) as well as his cossetting libertarian ideology which bottles him up straightjacket-like, unable to even see an inch past distorting haze of his dogmatism.
Besides, “cultural legacy” my hiney. The likes of Novoselic want to go to every extreme to make Seattle the perfect playground for wealthy people just like himself, and that involves completely erasing ever speck of the city that doesn’t conform to it. And that very much includes the “cultural legacy” Novoselic remembers dimly from his youth.
Someone needs to do the math. My understanding, and correct me with actual data if I’m wrong, is that there are 16,000 homeless folks in King county, and about 5000 shelter beds. The shelters are almost all full all the time. There aren’t thousands of open jail cells; there certainly aren’t thousands of in-patient drug rehab beds. All of this costs money, and no government has allocated the resources.
That said, yes, we need to rescue homeless folks from fentanyl addiction. It’s cheap, the streets are flooded with it. Being unhoused is miserable (esp in the winter, which now it’s not), and people turn to drugs. We are not handling this well, and with federal cutbacks, the homeless population will increase dramatically now. The sweeps make the homeless invisible, but we know there are hundreds of folks on the streets just in Ballard. It will become impossible to hide the problem in a few months. My humble (but well informed) opinion.
There is no political will to actually solve homelessness– i.e,, provide housing (not shelter beds). That actually costs money– something Seattlites (particularly the wealthy ones) do not want to pay. So, we are left with half measures that chase homeless around the city.
Does “storing property in public” refer to street parking? Sounds great. Why should taxpayers foot the bill for people who own things they don’t have room for and expect to store in public spaces?
As for the “anecdotal evidence” I have been hearing this for years…do people really there is some kind of welcome wagon that hands out goodie bags of weed and fentanyl to all comers?
Where do I sign? At last I’m hoping the tide is turning. While the more tolerant approaches are appropriate in some cases, we’re seeing that the discernment for which is lacking. L
Plenty of anecdotal evidence that folks are coming here from elsewhere because Seattle has a reputation for indiscriminate generosity. And we residents are stuck with the mess. I welcome change.
That’s just not true. Ask people who work with the homeless population: the vast majority are from western Washington. I did a survey of 50 folks in Bitter Lake and Woodland Park in 2021. 88% from Washington state.
I was, for three years, a volunteer on the One Night Count. We were trained to ask people where they were from, and the overwhelming majority of those I talked to were from another state. But the second question was “how long have you been here in Seattle?”, and if it was a month or more, they were counted as a Seattle resident. In part because one must register one’s car in Washington if one has lived here for one month.
To comment by feistybrain: the way I ask the question is, “where was your last stable housing where you owned or paid the rent or someone owned or paid the rent for you”. So that means being born in California, then moving to Washington with a job and income counts you as “from here”, but moving here while homeless does not. Some large portion of Seattle residents were not born in Washington state, so just asking “where are you from” isn’t useful in determining whether our homeless population is native or not.
The trouble with anecdotes is they boil down to somebody who just said something. For public policy what is needed is real empirical data, not just something somebody said. Because just relying on anecdotes you get awful policy from the likes of hysteria-driven media campaigns, which end up solving no real problems, often inflict real harm, and cost a lot of public dollars, and in the end all you’ve accomplished is to satiate some well-placed person’s extreme ideological preferences.