By Josh Feit

108 < 112 < 151

In her press conference last Wednesday, Mayor Wilson debuted a new homelessness approach that focuses on identifying homeless people by name and then prioritizes getting them into shelter and formulating individualized plans. Prompted by successful examples, like a joint Downtown Seattle Association/Purpose Dignity Action encampment resolution in Pioneer Square during the World Cup this summer, social service workers will hit the streets neighborhood by neighborhood and connect people to services and shelter that work for them. Erica has a full report.

In addition to this empathetic effort, Wilson also went on record at a press briefing last week to say the city has not—counter to Councilmember Dan Strauss’ claims—backed off on sweeps, telling two different reporters that she has no plans to change the city’s encampment removal policy. “Our Unified Care Tam has continued doing encampment removals at basically the same rate that they were doing removals before I entered office,” Wilson said. 

Wilson’s buy-in on sweeps was not news to us!

The subject of sweeps and how they beget more sweeps was actually the very first item in last Monday’s installment of this column, which also noted that lefty mayor Wilson had done more sweeps in her first year so far than her predecessor, Mayor Harrell had done by the same point in his first year.  Wilson’s 151 > Harrell’s 112. This, despite Harrell’s tough-love, football-coach reputation that endeared him to the pro-sweeps establishment.

It turns out Wilson’s 151 sweeps tally so far also bests Harrell’s tally for the same period (January through September) throughout his entire term, including in 2025, when the number of sweeps under Harrell was 108. In 2024, there were 112 sweeps under Harrell during the same period. In 2023, there were 95. And as I noted, during his first year in 2022, there were 112 sweeps.

These persistent numbers reiterate the main point I was making all along: Sweeps obviously aren’t a solution to homelessness.

Good on Mayor Wilson for at least adding a proven, humanist policy to the otherwise vicious circular logic of sweeps.

$30,000 > $15,000

We could soon find out who contributed to SeaFor, the shadowy entity former Seattle city council president Sara Nelson set up to raise money for local candidates while concealing donor’s names in order to “protect the privacy of businesses and individuals” (as its own website boasted.) That’s the possible silver lining, anyway, after the lefty Progressive People Power PAC  filed two complaints about a $30,000 donation Nelson’s fund made to a local PAC, North Seattle Neighbors. NSN is supporting the establishment-backed choice in this fall’s council race, Julie Kang, against progressive favorite Nilu Jenks.  The complaints convinced NSN to return the mystery money, which accounted for about two-thirds of the money NSN had raised to date.

How would returning the check reveal whose money SeaFor collected and passed through to NSN? Well, NSN effectively already spent the $30,000 by sending out an initial round of anti-Jenks mailers. As a result, in order to pay off the debt they incurred on those mailers, which they originally planned to cover in part with Seafor’s check, they’ll now have to go out and raise more money themselves. And it’s likely NSN will simply turn to the same conservative donor base that Nelson did. The public should keep an eye on NSN’s upcoming disclosure reports to see who their donors are in the next few weeks. NSN has until election day to cover the mailers; they’ve only reported $15,000 raised to date beyond the elusive $30,000.

I say “silver lining,” because on balance, this is an ethically-challenged turn of events for Seattle. Nelson got exactly what she wanted without having to spend any of her PAC’s money. Sure, NSN was going to buy the mailers before they had the money in hand, as political campaigns often do, operating on the assumption that they’d be able to raise the money in time to pay the eventual bill. But the bad actor in all of this, Nelson, hasn’t faced any consequences for her cynical chicanery. Her group’s ephemeral check, which as of last week accounted for two-thirds of NSN’s money “raised” to date, was on NSN’s books—and now it’s not.

By Monday, NSN had reported raising another $15,000 or so from individual donors, including former deputy mayor Tim Burgess, Vulcan chief real estate officer Ada Healey, Fremont industrial landowner Suzie Burke, and real estate investor Judith Runstad. By that time, though, NSN had already sent out another mailer accusing Jenks of being “clueless” on crime.

And as we were going to press, Jenks’ campaign announced they’d filed a complaint with the state Public Disclosure Commission and the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission calling on NSN to halt any more mailings until the names of their donors are released. They note in their complaint that the NSN’s mailers themselves list Nelson’s group as their top donor.

Josh@PubliCola.com