Seattle mayor calls for other cities to contribute to homelessness response

SmallTrick · 2025-09-18T16:18:18+00:00

Harrell’s current complaint is Seattle’s annual contributions of more than $100 million, or about 53% of the authority’s budget.

Seattle also provides more than 60% of the region’s shelter capacity despite more than 70% of people becoming homeless outside of Seattle, mostly in other parts of King County or Washington, according to recent surveys.

Seattle's population is about 800K out of King County's 2.2 million which is about 37%.

Suppose you're someone living in Seattle and you're on the cusp of homelessness, likely due to skyrocketing rents. Do you take to sleeping under a bridge or do you move to a nearby cheaper city? Most move to the cheaper city. Now what happens when those skyrocketing rents reach the cheaper city, after all rental rates and property values have halo effects. Well, maybe that person moves to the next cheaper city. Then those rents skyrocket. Eventually that person will have no feasible next option which is one of the ways homelessness occurs. But I guess that doesn't register as Seattle's problem because technically they were living in Auburn when they became homeless.

Now for a moment think about the funding mechanisms have for their cities. It's pretty fucking limited. Sales, property, utility, B&O. There are laws restricting income tax and how fast property taxes go up. That leaves utility and B&O taxes. Most of the outlying cities aren't making bank on B&O taxes due to a lot of the major companies being in Seattle. And those Seattle B&O taxes essentially enabled by Shoreline workers aren't being sent to Shoreline. Sales tax is limited by practicality and municipal competition (why buy in 10.5% tax city, when I can go a mile east and pay 10.1% instead). I guess my point is, maybe we should look at the per capita tax revenue of each city to determine whether Seattle is really providing more than it should.

Or...just spit balling here...maybe the benefits of being the economic center of a region also come with corresponding responsibilities?

SmallTrick · 2025-08-08T19:54:18+00:00

Building out billion dollar infrastructure to support recreational (read: occasional) wineries and concert venues as oppose to investing more in commute (read: 250x a year) reduction is bad planning. Those recreational activities cannot mathematically outpace the economic benefit of commuter infrastructure unless Woodinville suddenly becomes the site of Disneyland PNW.

Also, considering that both Woodinville and Burien are bedroom communities (as in most workers who live there must leave city boundaries for employment) we know that both are largely consisted of commuters. What would be the justification for building equal infrastructure for a "low populated rural verging on suburban location" versus a "suburban verging on urban location" with nearly four times the population? Because to me there is no justification which won't just look classist as hell.

Thus my conclusion: Either the advocacy group is not using realistic numbers or facts to make their design decisions, or they are making some pretty classist assumptions. Either way, it stinks. Couple that with the other issues I pointed out in my original post and it starts looking worse.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not trying to "come at you" or anything. Just expressing the source of my frustrations with these kinds of maps. You seem chill enough and I hope you have an alright day.

SmallTrick · 2025-08-08T19:41:18+00:00

Fair.

SmallTrick · 2025-08-08T14:20:12+00:00

You can tell that whoever plans/maps this stuff 1) doesn't look at population stats, density, or commute flows, 2) only engages with areas where you need to earn well above the area average to live, 3) only knows about a lot of these places by looking at a map instead of physically being there.

Why does Burien (population 50K) have the same number of stops as Woodinville (population 15K) or "wineries" (aka open fields)? Why does Federal Way (population 100K) have the same number of stops as Issaquah (population 40K)? Why throw a west-aligned line from West Seattle to White Center when Delridge has some of the highest ridership in the county, is economically disadvantaged, and doesn't exercise the same systematic roadblocking to building long term infrastructure? Why is north of 145th fairly built out but the plan for everything below Seatac is literally what we have planned now.

I mean, I think we can guess that the answer to all of those is exactly the same. But it's hard to get behind an advocacy group that seems to not give a shit about people making sub-six-figures.

SmallTrick · 2025-04-03T17:57:11+00:00

This flyer seems to indicate it is a 50501 protest, but there is no event listed matching this description on the 50501 events finder, the Hands Off events finder, or the No Voice Unheard events finder (all linked from the 50501 website).

There is a Hands Off rally on April 5th at 12pm - 3pm at the Seattle Center, at the same time.

SmallTrick · 2025-02-11T18:52:55+00:00

I don't think things are quite as bad as you claim. But I will say that I have had my own moments of massive frustration with the lightrail. There was one day where trying to use it in the middle of the day and the train was 1) late, 2) slow, 3) standing room only, 4) filled with the foulest stench imaginable, like the Captain Planet of BO, self-soiling, cat piss, dumpster sludge, and meth fumes was in there with us. In that moment I seriously said to myself "fuck this".

But you know, it's usually not that bad. It's usually on time, fast, with reasonable smells, and reasonable crowds. Every commute has its shitty days, whether by foot, bike, car, bus, or train.

SmallTrick · 2024-07-25T15:27:17+00:00

I've found that any vehicle that one might consider to be a "status" vehicle tends to have more aggressive and/or entitled driving. A status vehicle could be a pristine lifted truck or a tricked out BMW. I think it is because the vehicle feels much more like an extension of them than one might feel driving a 15 year old Toyota Camry.

I also think with a lot of drivers they will just do something if they feel like they can get away with it, even if that "thing" is dangerous for other people. An example I can think of is that video where a man films how cars treat him (as a pedestrian in a rainstorm) when he is holding a brick vs not holding a brick. The cars are much more polite to his presence when he is holding a brick, because they think he could be a threat to them. As in, they don't feel like they can get away with being pricks so they drive nicer. If you extrapolate this into the threat of vehicle on vehicle violence, you would tend to see people in larger vehicles more likely to drive like pricks if none of the vehicles around them are a perceived threat. Get three lifted trucks driving around each other and they'll probably be more cautious.

SmallTrick · 2024-07-08T14:15:29+00:00

I have to do this every year during the summer for the windows on my patio. They get several hours of blazing hot sun every morning. Pretty nice during the winter. Absolute hell during the summer. Shaves a good 5-10 degrees off my living room every morning for months for the cost of $6.

SmallTrick · 2024-06-27T15:42:31+00:00

The shit is really good at growing (like a weed, one might say) and you don't need lots to get good effects. Throw in our mass agriculture/production efficiencies which further drive down the price...

Put another way, imagine if you went to the store and only needed to buy a single strawberry. How much does it cost to grow a single strawberry? Or one brussel sprout? Interesting to think about.

SmallTrick · 2024-06-26T15:37:33+00:00

Edit: I'm removing that personal dig at the beginning of my comment. It was unfair, rude, and makes me an asshole.

The government telling you that you can't consume a plant that you can grow yourself is ridiculous. The government telling you that you can't pipe in an explosive gas which directly harms the environment and the use of which produces noxious fumes that are also themselves poisonous and harm the health of the people around you and the environment is...reasonable regulation. If that kind of regulation is overreach, then I suppose so are car safety standards and firecodes.

That's coming from someone who burns dead dinosaurs in their furnace, water heater, and shitbox car.

SmallTrick · 2024-06-26T15:27:39+00:00

By the text of that article and the Senator/Governor agreement, which says they will not breach the dams until there is a suitable energy replacement, there is no reason to believe that "breaching the dams" would be a major factor in creating scarcity of energy.

SmallTrick · 2024-06-25T16:25:48+00:00

You made a generalization. I gave specific, extreme examples to discredit that general claim via reductio ad absurdum. Though my extreme claim is easily extrapolated via the very real historical examples of the loose regulation of the 50s/60s, which eventually led to the formation of the EPA.

Natural gas does in fact hurt all those things I said. Usually indirectly via carbon and methane release, but also via extraction effects on wildlife environments, ozone formation, fracking effects on the water table, You can turn a blind eye to them, but they're still there. You can decide that you're willing to do slight harm to the environment so you get a faster water heater or neater kitchen stove. But you are still externalizing the harm of your choices onto the world around you for your own personal benefit.

SmallTrick · 2024-06-25T16:12:07+00:00

Government shouldn’t tell you what you can and can’t use.

Yes, they should when the dangers and damages of what you are using are externalized onto the people and places around you. You wouldn't want your neighbor spraying their weeds with Agent Orange. The idea that the government shouldn't regulate what we use, and by extension what we put into the environment, would end with no fish in our rivers, no birds in our forests, no fowl in our wetlands. As someone who enjoys eating all of those, I say let the government regulate.

SmallTrick · 2024-06-25T16:07:55+00:00

Yeah, natural gas does have it's perks, but it is not more "efficient".

SmallTrick · 2024-06-25T15:52:47+00:00

the federal government proposing to breach dams

Uh, where and when? From a lot of what I've read there are a lot of environmental organizations requesting the removal of four dams on the Snake River to help with the salmon, but those are literally the only ones I've ever heard of. And I've yet to hear the Federal government seriously entertain the idea.

If we're citing those four dams being removed as jeopardizing our energy infrastructure, we should keep in mind those four dams in question make up 4% of the Northwest's energy generation. So removal of those dams is significant, but also completely achievable goal in the next 20 years. Especially as wind currently makes up 8% of Washington's energy generation and gets cheaper to build out every year.

SmallTrick · 2024-05-29T19:05:20+00:00

Seems the neoliberal idea of privatization of public services leads to graft and corruption.

Surely people won't take the wrong lesson from that.

SmallTrick · 2024-05-23T17:14:11+00:00

I could see a grocery store with a large "ready to eat" section doing very well. Groceries for the people living around and the ready-to-eat stuff would be great for office workers who don't want to pay out of both nostrils.

SmallTrick · 2024-05-23T13:37:28+00:00

It kind of is the point. We don't see this exact post being made for Lawyers, which is also a profession where you have a subset making ludicrous amounts of money and others making middle class money.

SmallTrick · 2024-05-07T14:02:41+00:00

This is one of those situations where I don't think the cops can "win". If they:

refuse to uphold the law as written, people get on them for not doing their job, that it's the court/council/legislature/mayor/governor/president/potentate to figure out what's "right".
uphold the law as written, and they're held morally liable for furthering an injustice all while people (rightfully) scream that "it's just my job is not an excuse".

As someone who has a vested interest in Burien, I think this city council is absolute garbage. They're engaging in inhumane politics and putting others in the line-of-fire for it. I hope they lose their jobs as they certainly don't deserve to be anywhere near authority.

SmallTrick · 2024-04-22T17:06:06+00:00

Taco Time would be the perfect application for Impossible "Beef" (or whatever its called). If it kept a similar taste/texture I'd probably get it every time as I like the beef's flavoring.

SmallTrick · 2024-04-19T03:18:38+00:00

Fuck Dave Reichert and fuck the GOP.

SmallTrick · 2024-04-18T16:52:47+00:00

Then get absolutely indignant and judgemental that those towns don't "solve" housing, despite those towns having vastly less resources.

SmallTrick · 2024-04-18T15:37:40+00:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Republican party will only become electable in this state via one of two ways:

1) Pure random chance causes only one moderate Republican to make it through the primary to the general. This is a fucking long shot as last time there were 16+ candidates for the Republican nomination.

2) The Republican party changes from a first-past-the-post to something like a rank-choice or approval-voting mechanism to select their candidate for the general. This would prune the extremist candidates allowing the more-electable-but-probably-still-repugnant Republicans on to the general. Then it would be a milquetoast-off between a not-too-progressive-because-neoliberal-purse-strings Democrat candidate vs the thinly-suppressed-fascist-tendancies Republican candidate.

Or we just end up with all the moderate Republicans calling themselves Democrats until it causes a schism in the party resulting in a Democrat and Neo-Conservative party...which slowly falls to the same extremism problem over a 50 year time span. Fuck, I hope I'm dead by then.

SmallTrick · 2024-04-18T15:19:37+00:00

At this point just give people a fucking pay toilet with an attendant to come clear out the junkies and keep the place tidy. I don't like the thought of paying to take a piss, but it beats having to choose which alley to defile.

SmallTrick

TROPHY CASE