What is the current composition of the city council? Are any of the members actually conservative, or just not-progressive? Why do you think things are so bad in the PNW compared to other places, if not the governance?
The council shifted hard-right last election, and Bruce Harrell (former council chairman and career politician who has blamed everyone but himself for the city's failures in years past) has a full slate supporting him.
The slate's politics seems to be pro-out-of-state-business/landlord/police, anti-density, anti-pedestrian, anti-homeless NIMBYism. Politically positioned as the common-sense solution to the insane progressive politics that have been ruining the city.
The metrics aren't exactly on their side. SPD continues to be an incredible combination of overpaid, unaccountable, incapable of hiring, useless, and actively dangerous to the public, the homeless numbers keep growing, rents and cost of living are rising, and the council is doing everything it can to stonewall the state's efforts to solving the housing crisis in the city.
> Why do you think things are so bad in the PNW compared to other places, if not the governance?
It might have something to do with the hundreds of thousands of highly paid people moving into an area which didn't build enough housing units to support them, thus displacing tens of thousands of people out of the margins and onto the street.
It probably didn't have as much to do with (a loud) minority of progressives that were on the council as we've been told.
I've only got a child's grasp of free market economics (and of musical chairs), but this seems to be the most predictable outcome of that sort of thing. When the number of people in an area exceeds the number of beds, some of those people will eventually be sleeping in tents.
The idea that the homeless are residents who have now been displaced is a misnomer, especially in Seattle. Seattle has abundant housing and welfare choices and very loose enforcement of any laws. Up north you can get a govt provided tiny home with high speed internet, if one were to choose to leave the streets.
Seattle has five-year waiting lists[1] for low-income housing, and practically no housing options for someone who is actually broke and homeless, even if they don't have an addiction.
It has some shelters, but shelters aren't housing. A shelter is a place you can (sometimes) sleep, it's not a place you can live in. And it doesn't have 9,000 empty shelter beds, to house all the street homeless, either.
You know where has abundant housing? NYC. A city with 10 times the population, but half the street homeless. Because the rest are housed. (A foreign concept to this city.)
It is in New York, and NYC doesn't look like shit thanks to it.
But sure, I guess you like seeing thousands of street homeless all day, every day.[1] Because that's what you'd get, even if they were all sheltered (which Seattle won't do, either).
P.S. It damn well is the public's responsibility when public policies create the housing crisis.
[1] Which certainly put you in opposition to the expressed preferences of this entire city.
