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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

It wasn’t this bad in the 90s or 80s, when crime was higher everywhere else. Relatively speaking, Seattle is worse off than it was before, which is a bit sad for the non transplants.

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I moved to Seattle in 1994 and it's not clear to me that it's worse now than then. Clearly many neighborhoods are not worse, there's been a huge amount of gentrification over the 25 years I've been here. Homelessness and drug issues were big problem back then, too.

I've lived mainly on Capitol Hill and it's a safer and "nicer" place than it was back in the 90's. I had drug deals happening on corner outside my house back then, the neighborhood is great now. I also lived downtown, where Pike St. between 1st and 2nd Aves was horrendous with homelessness and drug use. Clearly much nicer now. The Central District (the other neighborhood I'm most familiar with) has also undergone huge level of gentrification since then, is much "nicer" place to live than it was in the 90's.

Yes, homelessness, and drug use and mental health issues are big problems, and I'm not sure the city has taken best approach to them. But it's easy to criticize without having better answer. The sensationalist ranting I hear sometimes in media and in personal anecdotes seems pretty misleading.

I dunno, the common refrain I hear from native Seattleites is that many places -- like Fremont, Ballard, and West Seattle, were truly awful in the 80s & 90s. Usually just at the mention of where I live, which is one of those neighborhoods.

Compared to Orlando and Salt Lake City, Seattle feels about on par to me with regards to safety and the homeless problem (adjusted for the much higher population & density). Which is useless information because it is an anecdote, but the best way to bring data into a conversation is a lot of useless competing anecdotes.

I lived in all three of those places in the early 90s (as a UW student and with my aunt near Alaska Junction in West Seattle). No, at least then, they weren’t as bad, or bad at all.

Ballard? I’m not even sure where it being dangerous would come from, maybe getting run down by a bad Norwegian driver? Checkout Cops in Ballard: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hGlDVmBLibg

(Yes, that is Bill Nye)

I was mugged multiple time in the u-district in the 90s. The ave in general is far less sketchy than it used to be.

Ballard is much worse. It's gone from an enclave of retired scandy fishermen to hip neighborhood with a thriving walkable main drag. Because much of the street parking is still free the homeless living out of barely functional vans and rvs can live without hassle and attempt to panhandle on the drag. I imagine that at least some of those vehicles are also essentially drug emporiums further concentrating the homeless population that is hooked. ... Still not as sketchy as the u-district in the 90s though.

Someone points out the crime rates are better, not worse? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20781556

Exactly this. Transplants are part of the problem though - they’ve brought their political culture/voting habits/policies with them, and are ruining a formerly effectively managed city without asking why it was attractive to move here in the first place.

Please go ask the lifers at the May Day riots how they feel about the effective management of the city before all these darn transplants showed up.

Every stat on violent crime I’ve seen is that the 80s were a peak tho?

The homeless problem wasn’t as large in the 80s, violent crime was maybe higher, but property crime seems to have been lower.

I worked at 3rd and pine McDonald’s in 94-95 (one of the main hangouts for Seattle’s homeless population back then), and downtown was a lot more sane back then. The policing was much more aggressive than it is today, which I think had a large part to do with that.

Do you have statistics to back up this claim?

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