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Comment by sergiomattei | Hacker News Reader

> The entire downtown area is just homeless camps.

This isn’t even remotely close to true.

> You can't browse around outside Westlake Center without being bombarded and accosted by aggressive panhandlers. Even the iconic Pike Place Market was overrun with druggies.

I live on Pike Street. There’s homeless, but it’s not “overrun” and for the year+half I’ve lived here I haven’t been “accosted by aggressive panhandlers”. These are areas with constant foot traffic.

Yes 3rd & Pike is bad, but it’s improved since then. Late at night it’s not the best—but it’s never been.

If this is truly your experience, I urge you to visit again. Seattle is a large and beautiful city with a lot to offer.

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In general the homeless problem downtown has gotten better but a few hotspots are still bad, notably Chinatown/International District. I used to enjoy taking visitors there until about 5 years ago when a few Asians got their heads bashed in or shot around Chinatown and Belltown. It was a politically inconvenient time to highlight who exactly was attacking Asians, and the issue was swept under the rug. Now we just stay in Bellevue, which luckily seems to be getting all the new Asian small businesses.

I agree, Chinatown/ID took a turn for the worst unfortunately.

I don't know why you're being downvoted. I've lived in the area for nearly 20 years and I agree that his description is far exaggerated. It was true in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic (when any eviction or forcible displacement of people was prohibited), but not since then. Today, the visibility of homeless encampments in Seattle is roughly the same as it was 20 years ago.

> The homeless encampment problem in Seattle today is roughly now back at the same level of problem we had 20 years ago.

See, this is wild to me. Seattle has a long-time notorious problem with Tent Cities and even now it's just completely normal. I remember The Jungle under I-5 at Beacon Hill was a big problem. I'm sure it still is.

"The Jungle" isn't at all the same now, and is mostly cleared out from its heyday in ca 2018.

The larger problem with "The Jungle" is that nobody can agree on what it means, and where it is. I used to live on Beacon Hill, and the way journalists used the phrase was all over the place. Incidents anywhere from the I-90/I-5 interchange to the camps under I-5 all the way south to Georgetown, to the camps up in the woods in the East Duwamish greenbelt were all called "The Jungle".

This sounds like the perspective of a beat-down Seattlite that thinks all the problems are just "normal". I lived there for a very long time, and have lived in several other major cities since then.

Seattle's problems are not "normal". And they should not be normalized by thinking this is just how it is. It is not that way in other places.

Deflecting is a fun game, but I won’t play it. I’m challenging your hyperbole here—on the other hand, you’re making assumptions about me.

Explain to me how “the entire downtown area is just homeless tents”. By all means bring some proof of Pike Place being “overrun with druggies”. Get real.

Walk from Pike Place Market, 1st and Pike, east up Pike St toward Capitol Hill. Count the number of homeless camps you see sitting on cardboard boxes in the middle of the sidewalks. All along Pike St, 3rd Ave, 4th Ave. And then count the number of SPD officers you see (ignoring the fanny-pack guys handing out naloxone). You'll get it.

I’m so glad you mention “going up Pike towards Capitol Hill” because I live right on the section where Cap Hill & First Hill starts.

My lived experience is that I could walk the length of Pike from Bellevue Ave towards the waterfront and see two-three tents at most. Homeless yes, but encampments? “Overrun”? “Tent city”?

It’s so easy to make hyperbolic statements and a pain to prove them wrong. I can see how you get away with spouting this nonsense—and people believe it.

Let me know if anyone wants a YouTube video or something, I’ll be glad to take a fun evening stroll and prove you wrong.

Start at Boren Ave and walk down Pike Street. Film it.

You don't even need to film it, it's on Google Maps Street View: https://maps.app.goo.gl/cdyFttFsQPhpBHR48

That street view was filmed taken two months ago, when it was still warm and nice out, so tent activity would've been at its peak.

I wish I had seen your post earlier because I literally walked that stretch of road earlier this evening -- a couple friends of mine from out of town are going to the Patti Smith show at the Paramount tonight and we had drinks nearby. No tents in sight though we did encounter someone walking around with a blanket wrapped around their head. But still, one probable homeless drug addict is hardly "overrun".

It's really not as you describe... I agree things were getting worse in ~2019 and then became way worse during the pandemic, but it's much different now.

Thanks for the link.

In the interest of saving myself an hour of time uploading a video, I’ll attest that yes—that street view is as “average day on Pike” as it gets.

To be clear, there are homeless who walk around the area… and Capitol Hill isn’t exactly the nicest area these days. 3rd and Pike isn’t nice. But Seattle in 2025 isn’t real-life World War Z.

Parent commenter should visit sometime.

A single druggie/hobo is unacceptable in a functional society. Just enforce trespassing laws.

> I lived there for a very long time

It sounds like your last visit was during the COVID-19 pandemic. Homeless encampment conditions in downtown Seattle and throughout the city have much improved since then. Today, visible homelessness is effectively the same as it was back in ~2005.

All the west coast port cities (SF, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver) imho have always had a similar s.hole vibe. For most of the last 40 years SF was the worst. But now Seattle has the top place. Clearly complex issue with many causes but also clearly someone in SF did something to improve the situation and someone in Seattle didn't do that thing.

Seattle was highly functional for a while. When the tech industry grew, the region attracted a huge population of people from California and it destroyed the local and state politics. SF policies came to Seattle and in a worse way. SF has at least swung back a tiny bit but Seattle hasn’t, and it’s why there is rampant crime, trash, and encampments.

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