How Seattle Became a Shit City and Why it Will Only Get Worse

Reflecting on the past brings back many memories, some of the fondest being of daylong bike adventures with my best friend, Fred. We were kids, barely teenagers, and the freedom of two wheels gave us the ability to explore previously unknown parts of a once great city. We would set out barely after the sun rose and not return home until dinner time. Departing from Seattle’s Meadowbrook neighborhood, we peddled to Gas Works park, downtown, Golden Gardens, the U-District, the possibilities were seemingly endless. Back then, nearly two decades ago, these places offered an interesting and exciting outlet for the city’s young people. We’d meet peers, interact with people from backgrounds very different than our own, and at times, although not often, have unsettling encounters that we’d later laugh about. Sure, there were dangers out there but we rarely felt unsafe or unwelcome while getting to know the city we called home. Seattle offered something for everyone and maintained it’s public spaces in good condition so that they could be enjoyed by locals and visitors alike.

Around this same time I went to visit my sister in Cincinnati, Ohio. As we walked through the downtown area I was told to stay close and not wander off, that the downtown sector was dead and crime filled, not like what I was used to back home. As a kid I knew that there were areas that were better left alone unless you had some business there, but the idea that the central hub of a city, the downtown core, would be abandoned and left to criminals shocked me, even in my youth. There were skyscrapers surrounded by empty streets, the only people willing to come downtown were those who had to, when there was no other option. Tourists, no way. Families, yeah right. Small businesses, they wouldn’t be so foolish.

Unfortunately, the Cincinnati of twenty years ago makes the Seattle of today look good, very good. Currently, downtown Seattle is a festering shithole of homeless drug addicts and suffering mental patients who take over whole city blocks, constructing encampments with the full blessing of Seattle leadership while driving out locally owned businesses due to overwhelming amounts of crime and chaos. Is there any street in the world with enough to offer that the presence of human feces, heroin needles, and people in the midst of mental breakdown wouldn’t make you reconsider visiting? The shop owners in downtown Seattle know the answer to this question; no, no one is going to compete with these things in order to go shopping, or to dinner, or even to work, if they can avoid it.

Brian Nordwall, CEO of Syndio Solutions, recently explained to KOMO 4 News why they would be adding their name to the ever growing list of those fleeing,

“We probably had 50 people living in tents on our block. The customers don’t want to come down (because of) the attempted theft. It was an average 3 to 5 attempted break-ins a week. One by one, they broke every single window we had. The crime, the boarded-up windows, the homeless tents, the feces, the threat. It’s astonishing what has happened to this city in a short time.”

How did this happen? Well, it’s no mystery, yet you won’t hear the answer coming from any of the voices that dominate the conversation. Everyone living in Seattle should take a few minutes and talk to some of their neighbors who live on the streets or in one of the city’s shelters. What you will discover is that the people who inhabit the endless amount of tents in parks and on sidewalks are not from Seattle, they’re recent transplants who came here for a very specific reason. They arrive from all over the country. But why? Well, ask them and they’ll tell you. It’s because they are given carte blanche to live lives of addiction fueled criminality, protected by spineless scumbag politicians who view enabling drug addicted criminals to victimize the city as ‘progress’. Let’s be clear, the BILLIONS of dollars that these ideologically guided fools have funneled into the pockets of their cronies in an effort to solve the homelessness/addiction problem plaguing the city have only made it worse. Jenny Durkin, the entire city council,  city attorney Pete Holmes, and county prosecutor Dan Satterburg are the problem. They should be voted out and given zero authority over anything ever again. They are abject failures. They are useless elected officials who should be viewed with disdain and disgust for what they have done to the city. If any of these outright enemies of the citizens of Seattle dare to open their mouths to speak about homelessness or crime or safety, or schools for that matter, they should be shouted down before the first sentence is uttered. Their track record speaks for itself, THEY ARE THE PROBLEM. Unfortunately the city will get what it deserves, brainwashed voters believing that these destructive policies are  rooted in empathy and anti-racism are going to continue to elect candidates who will only exasperate the problem, as has been the standard for years now. If you hear a political candidate mention ‘equity’ or ‘systemic racism’ or ‘dismantling systems of oppression’ know that they are not looking for solutions grounded in reality, they are ideological extremists who believe in creating a utopia; they can’t, and their efforts will only result in greater suffering for society’s most vulnerable while the city’s law abiding citizens pick up the bill and are increasingly victimized by crime.