Seattle’s (former?) Capitol Hill neighborhood

[Bootstrap]

I just did a Google news search on Seattle's Capital Hill neighborhood.

https://news.google.com/search?q=Capito ... id=US%3Aen

Is there anything noteworthy going on in the Capitol Hill neighborhood these days? Does anyone have firsthand knowledge? I'll ask a few people I know who live in that area.

[Ken]

I just did a Google news search on Seattle's Capital Hill neighborhood.

https://news.google.com/search?q=Capito ... id=US%3Aen

Is there anything noteworthy going on in the Capitol Hill neighborhood these days? Does anyone have firsthand knowledge? I'll ask a few people I know who live in that area.

It has been back to normal for 2 years. Or as normal as Capital Hill ever is in Seattle. It has always been an edgy bohemian neighborhood. My college student daughter passes through there on occasion when she takes the subway and then Broadway streetcar from the University of Washington to visit her HS best friends at Seattle University a few blocks further south.

This is the November 2022 Google Street View of Pine Street which was the epicenter (on the playing fields to the left is where the tent city was): https://goo.gl/maps/XqoGSdpgMmHqm7qB9

And this is the November 2022 Google Street View of 12th Ave where they broke into the branch police station which is the building to the left with the parking ramp: https://goo.gl/maps/gp3siKf3Pu9qETj1A

Another look at where it all happened from the other direction: https://goo.gl/maps/VmtAff9DkTddHhMx7

You can use street view to walk up and down any of the streets to see what the area looks like today (or as of 2 months ago). I'm sure Temp will be traumatized by all the rainbow flags but otherwise it is pretty normal for that part of Seattle. Capital Hill has always been the edgy gay neighborhood of Seattle just like Chelsea in NYC or Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.

This is a more normal part of Seattle, the west entrance to UW: https://goo.gl/maps/3JKe4fTYFPUZWN8i9 and north entrance to UW (and Greek Row): https://goo.gl/maps/VkrHHNCkCzBJQeWJA

And this is the famous Pike Place Market in the center of downtown as of last November: https://goo.gl/maps/rm6sG5MVYFTctMRb9 You can google map walk around downtown from here and see how burnt out it all looks.

[Josh]

“Homeless tent cities are no big deal”

[temporal1]

I just did a Google news search on Seattle's Capital Hill neighborhood.

https://news.google.com/search?q=Capito ... id=US%3Aen

Is there anything noteworthy going on in the Capitol Hill neighborhood these days? Does anyone have firsthand knowledge? I'll ask a few people I know who live in that area.

Reading just the former 2 pages in this topic covers a lot about how Seattle is doing, post 2020 anarchy.
Capital Hill is in mid-Seattle, my son lived there for awhile when he worked for Boeing. i visited him there.

i began this thread because Capital Hill, Seattle and area, are palpably important to me. i’m not a passer-by.

My daughter+family live in Seattle suburbs/area, we always enjoyed going into Seattle BEFORE 2020 anarchy.
MANY area people avoid it like the plague, citing crime, open drug deals, dirty needles, etc.
The posts on the previous pages tell the tale.

i miss driving into Seattle, but, my daughter has numerous “no-go” instructions for me, post 2020. It’s not just Seattle proper or Capital Hill, politicians have relocated many homeless to other areas, hotels+motels have been converted to spread the joy.

My young granddaughter has been physically ill at viewing open drug deals, men vomiting and urinating openly on streets, etc.
One summer i was there, she was so ill and refusing to eat, i was terrified for her. i pray everyday for my family to leave that world epi-center of carnal sin and generalized dysfunction.

i know it’s geographically beautiful, and there are tons of rich people. i want my family out of there.
Over years, this has been my second home, i’ve driven a lot in Seattle and quite a lot in the area.
i see the beauty. i see the depravity and ugliness. i see the outrageous cost of living.

As the VANCOUVER video describes on the former page, housing is NOT a great answer for drug abusers. They use housing to hide away, often overdosing with no one noticing. The VANCOUVER video has a lot of practical information.

General neighborhoods:


Spoof map:

[temporal1]

Seattle-area percentage of ‘house rich, cash poor’ among highest in U.S.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... st-in-u-s/

[temporal1]

When we visited SWITZERLAND, late 1980’s, we stayed with local friends.
Together, we had 2 small boys, our daughter was 12, we walked+hiked, took trains to so many places! Thrilling visit.

One afternoon we were walking through a city side street, it was beautiful+clean. (i don’t recall the location)
My friend warned, “This area is fine in DAYTIME, safe for families. But BEWARE THE NIGHT!” She described a XXX-rated adult world.
When we looked closely, we could see small signs of it hidden behind the signature-Swiss cleanliness of the daylight world!
i don’t believe the children noticed anything.

It was an object lesson in how looks can be deceiving!
So can photographs, as has been discussed on this forum.



Switzerland is amazing at being able to quickly+efficiently clean up overnight messes to have everything looking squeaky-clean by dawn. i never saw these cleanup crews in action, but i saw lots of messes (for instance, from street festivals) cleaned up by daylight.
Impressive.

[Ken]

Seattle-area percentage of ‘house rich, cash poor’ among highest in U.S.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... st-in-u-s/

Yep. That is a huge problem and largely due to the fact that Seattle is landlocked (surrounded by water on all sides) and there are huge number of wealthy NIMBY types (both liberal and conservative) who control the political process and who don't want to see any increase in density at all, despite the fact that they live in one of the largest and fastest growing metro areas in the country. They are probably the single biggest reason why Seattle has a big homeless problem. Not the only reason, there are lots of other reasons. But probably the biggest reason.

Although in Seattle it is probably more the case that a lot of people are both "house rich" and "cash rich" because it is a very wealthy city. And it is generational. If you are a boomer or older Gen-X in your 40s or 50s and bought years ago you are probably golden. If you are younger and didn't get to experience the big housing run-up then you are probably struggling to either pay rent or a mortgage.

[Ken]

“Homeless tent cities are no big deal”

They are a big deal and a big problem. There just aren't any left where that whole Seattle protest thing happened a couple years ago. Maybe the random homeless on a street corner, but no tent cities.

This was June 2020



This is the same block today

https://goo.gl/maps/WZ4Yaa2LXG9dxMGA9



This is what the park looked like back then



This is what it looks like today (you can see the same park structure in both photos but they are taken from different angles)
https://goo.gl/maps/9sdgNER6aaCeaEbQ6

[Josh]

How, exactly, does increasing density fix a problem with drug users openly using drugs?

[Ken]

How, exactly, does increasing density fix a problem with drug users openly using drugs?

I should think the answer is obvious.

If people have a roof over their head, even a cheap scuzzy single room occupancy flophouse with rats, then they don't have to shoot up in the streets and public parks. There were plenty of heroin junkies in the 50s and 60s too. But most cities were full of cheap SRO housing that you could actually afford on a SS disability pension or whatever. So we weren't stumbling over them on the sidewalks and they weren't invading kids playgrounds. At least not nearly so much.

During the 60s and 70s we bulldozed and remodeled hundreds of thousands if not millions of units of cheap housing in cities across the US in the name of urban renewal and today's cities are the result. Closing mental hospitals across the country and the subsequent waves of opioid epidemics didn't help either.

It is all utterly predictable. The solutions are obvious too. The obstacles are mainly political.