I lived in capitol hill for a decade, 3 blocks from CHAZ, and recently moved a mile away. The city is not even remotely overrun with homelessness.
Sure, there are people without homes. Do they seriously impact the lifestyle of others? Hardly at all.
This characterization of the Puget Sound feels way out of touch to me. It's a wonderful place to live.
Sure it's not "overrun," but there are a lot of them, and not enough jobs or affordable housing.
People complained about homeless people coming into the city for the benefits and I thought that was just a myth the Amazon employees would spew, but I talked to a social worker who told me that's true and that her office dealt with a lot of people who came to Seattle because of their programs and benefits.
I occasionally saw a homeless person, but that was about the worst of it. And I was out on the town a lot. Oh my car got broken into once as well. Once in 11 years.
I never had any bad interactions with them I guess, but I broke my heart to see that many of them, especially in the downtown areas and further out towards the Interstate and underpasses.
I dunno, maybe I'm too sensitive, but it broke my heart. It's one of the many reasons I left Seattle.
Consider: if you don’t see homeless people, it might not be because there’s less homelessness. It might just be that they were driven out.
I'm a large man. It's worse for people who are not physically imposing. A woman I knew worked an early shift job (leave at 3:45am to open up). She was regularly followed and harassed while walking to work sometimes by gangs of men, she left the city in less than a year.
These problems are getting worse because there's literally hundreds of thousands of citizens (you can see them in this comment chain) who will rush to disagree with anyone who raises these problems. I'm well-equipped to buy a house here, but we decided several days ago to stop looking for one. We decided we're going to leave the Puget Sound area to get away from this.