u/HighColonic

Last summer, a Seattle Public Schools official emailed the city team that responds to homeless encampments about a revolving cast of people in RVs and tents that lined the street leading to the district’s Sodo headquarters.

He said the RVs and homeless people forced staff and families to walk by scenes of drug use and panhandling and returned no matter how often the city’s Unified Care Team targeted the area to be cleared. Ted Howard, the schools’ accountability officer, asked for “lasting solutions.”

Emails obtained by The Seattle Times show they landed on a popular one in Sodo: large rectangular concrete barriers, often called ecology blocks or eco-blocks. Private businesses and residents have installed them throughout the industrial district to take up parking spaces and right-of-ways used by people living in RVs. 

But they are illegal. 

~ So is camping and drug use, but <shrug>...

Six people were injured after three shootings in Sodo and South Seattle on Sunday night into Monday morning, the Seattle Police Department said on X.

No one has been arrested, and information about the shootings was limited.

~ World Cup go boom!

What the mayor’s office is describing is 1,000 beds, with van rides connected to them. It’s a real effort, and I don’t want to dismiss it. But 1,000 beds is a project. We need a system. The question isn’t just “do we have enough shelter?” It’s “do we know where each person is, what they actually need and how to match them to something that fits?” Those are three different questions. The 1,000-bed goal answers one of them, and the city chooses to close its eyes to the rest instead of taking the political risk of saying: Let’s end homelessness.

Here’s what a coordinated system looks like. Start with a shared map of where people are and where they fit. Where is someone in terms of housing stability? A tent, a car, a shelter, a group home, a tiny home, an apartment? Each step comes with different supports, different costs and different next steps. And alongside housing, where is someone in terms of mental health and recovery? That sounds soft until you realize that peer counseling, Recovery Cafe, Peer Seattle, the library, AA meetings and art classes are often what make the difference between someone staying housed or cycling back to the street. Both need to be visible in the same system.

~ This here is lived experience, sugarcakes.