Businesses in Seattle could pay millions to help city deal with homeless problem

SGT Russell Colburn - How much do other cities pay on homelessness? Without a frame of reference, those numbers don't mean a whole lot. The problem has grown because we've skyrocketing housing and rent costs.

This article indicates that you're wrong - the vast majority of homeless are from here https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/king-countys-homeless-are-overwhelmingly-from-here-service-providers-say/.

SPC Joel Quey - No Joel I don't think the Times makes your point. All based on zip codes and the honor system? What could go wrong with that? 30% refused to answer at all. The rest. They know how the game is played and they work it. It's a bit like when I go to Home Depot or some other store and they want a zip code "to help improve service". I give them 09742. It's for W. Berlin and don't exist anymore, but I use it anyway. Sure there are Seattle/King County/Washington homeless here. But many are not. I work at a project that sees one and a half million people a year pass through. There are 3 homeless camps surrounding it and I deal with our "urban campers", (as some like to call themselves) all the time. And I talk with them too. They got the system down and they like it just the way it is. That's why their here. Here's a story from Crosscut which normally runs on the liberal side. The first half is about the tax, but the second deals with the failures which are only growing. https://crosscut.com/2018/05/workers-world-unite-against-kshama-sawant And a story in my northwest that talks about the draw Seattle offers http://mynorthwest.com/297793/portland-begins-sending-homeless-people-to-other-cities-including-seattle/?

Thanks. I'll try to look into this more, when I have time.

All surveys are basically based on the honor system, yet we're still convinced that they work more often than not (you still have to accept a margin of error, of course). And yeah, some people do what you do, and just make up an answer, we still usually end up with usable data.

Obviously, people in an article probably aren't going to say "I come to Seattle because they let me break the law", so we have to take those responses with a grain of salt - that said, if people have a better chance of surviving here, as one said, is that necessarily a bad thing? I mean, isn't that what the American Dream was based on - that people from all over the world fled here to escape miserable conditions, because they thought they had a better chance of surviving here?

SGT Russell Colburn - Thanks for your elegant response. I would not have been as gentile. I loved growing up in Seattle. What is there now is NOT my city. I worked Second Harvest when Sunny Jim was still in operation and gave us free peanut butter. I had a guard soldier who was a medic that chose to be homeless in the 90's and lived under the offramps to no-where. We was the only medic for many of the others camped there. He finally left in 2002 when the "movement" people as he called them took over the narrative.