by Josh Feit
More Sweeps ≠ Less Homelessness
During last week’s city council budget hearings, Ballard council member Dan Strauss channelled a business owner in his district to give a speech criticizing Mayor Wilson. There’s an encampment in front of the business, Strauss said, leading to this dais grandstand: “We have seen in this last year, since last October, a complete change in the city and how effectively the city is addressing homelessness.”
He continued: “I have a business in downtown Ballard that had an encampment in front of their business last October and .. it wasn’t moved until, I believe, March. And that person reported to me that they have had an encampment on one of the four blocks around their business—and it’s a small block—270 days out of the last 365 days.” This demonstrated, Strauss said, that “just the ability to interact with and work with people has changed from a three-week cycle to a three-plus-month cycle”.
What Strauss’ (and his constituent’s) sidewalk tent example actually shows is not that we need more sweeps, but the opposite: Sweeps don’t work. They simply push homeless people around the city. Logically enough, in the context of an ongoing, active sweeps campaign, an encampment has now landed on this particular doorstep. Sweeping the people living in that encampment to another part of Ballard just means that a different business will eventually end up in Strauss’ ear.
Consider: Wilson is actually doing more sweeps than her tough-love predecessor, Bruce Harrell. According to the UCT’s own records, they’ve done more than 150 full encampment removals this year, compared to 112 by this point in Harrell’s term. According to the UCT’s “site journals,” the team rarely connects encampment residents to shelter.
Complaining about a homeless encampment in front of a business as an argument for more sweeps—when the people at that encampment were likely swept there in the first place—reminds me of the illogical days when neighbors argued against upzones on the grounds that they would make housing more expensive even as housing prices were skyrocketing under the strict Seattle zoning that prevented building more housing.
Seattle Home Listings Increase > Home Listings Increase in All Other Metro Areas
This brings me to the post-single-family-zoning-only Seattle housing market. According to Zillow data for September 2026, Seattle has the biggest percentage increase in home listings for US metro areas. Seattle’s current 14,877 listing represented a 20.3% increase from September 2025.
With housing prices dropping 1.1% month over month and 2.2% year over year, Seattle is a buyer’s market right now.
Rents, by the way, dropped .2% in September and ticked up only minimally, and far below inflation, at 1.8% year over year with typical rent at $2,250.
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Cutting $950,000 is Not a Good Look
As I’ve noted before in this column, I’m frustrated with Mayor Wilson’s approach to reviving Seattle’s business climate. Following the recommendations of a report her Office of Economic Development commissioned, the mayor seems focused on prompting more tech-adjacent startups as opposed to girding existing small businesses. The thinking goes that tech businesses have a disproportionately positive impact on jobs and the local economy. But my thinking is that indie businesses, just like childcare and affordable housing, are prerequisites for economic growth. Indie small businesses, for example, bring the crowds and lines that make cities vibrant. Lines around the block at clubs are a public policy win for a city.
I’ve been asking managers at bars and shops lately what the city could do for them right now. One thing I’m consistently hearing has to do with the costs of repairs and infrastructure upgrades—how those costs, often related to city inspections, can be debilitating. One manager, who recently oversaw the closure of a longtime North Seattle business (and still manages a couple more across the city), gave a specific example about graffiti, reporting that the cost of repeatedly cleaning up the graffiti —as the city requires—became onerous for the neighborhood bar that closed.
I’m not convinced graffiti cleanup could sink a healthy business, nor do I think the city’s fixation on graffiti —particularly under Mayor Harrell, who actually funded anti-graffiti education for kids—is discerning policy. But I took this bar manager’s request for city support in earnest—and, lo and behold, it turns out Wilson’s budget cuts $950,000 for a program that helps private business owners clean up graffiti on their buildings.
As a council Central Staff memo put it, “The proposed budget would not continue funding for these services and [Seattle Parks & Recreation’s] ability to offer private property owners graffiti abatement services would be significantly impacted.”
I tend to filter the business-lens on local politics with skepticism, but as a Wilson fan I must say, when the bad-mood example from a bar manager tracks so succinctly with Wilson’s new budget, the mayor’s got a problem. I’m not saying reinstating a graffiti cleanup contract is the answer. I’m saying Wilson’s angle on what’s ailing Seattle’s economy has the wrong emphasis.
Josh@PubliCola.com