This Is How Bad The Homeless Problem in Seattle Is Now

there's a reason people call it freedom free tents free drugs free money free medical care free reign what began as a sympathetic and civilized agendas exploded into a crisis all over seattle are signs of misfortune and tragedy and despite a lot of the money and platitudes the catastrophe here is only getting worse so on a chilly day in late october i drove all over the city to see the extent of it all the goal was to check out seattle's newest plan a series of tiny temporary villages that the city thinks will help alleviate the number of people on its streets and along the way i got just a small glimpse into how bad things in seattle have become a big part of the problem here is drugs and mental illness while the cost of living's put hundreds if not thousands of seat lights out of their homes it's the city's policy on drug use and law enforcement that really has made the problem here so bad the city tolerates drug abuse and even encourages it police officers complain they can't enforce drug laws or property crimes it's a broken system here and residents are fed up a lot of people feel the city caters to its growing homeless population and even encourages more of this through its lacks policies at this point it's hard to tell if seattle's the infection or the host and because of all of this property crimes in seattle are the highest they've ever been smashed windows stolen cars stolen bikes home robberies muggings vandalism arson rapes assaults it's appalling of all major u.s cities only san francisco has more property crimes for all the same reasons the city removes encampments all over the city but all that does is spread people around into parks and playgrounds onto sidewalks into nice neighborhoods onto hillsides on access roads and under bridges it's awful and it's sad there's limited shelters here and many of the people here don't want to be in shelters sometimes shelters can make the problem worse i mean in some seattle shelters they supply heroin and even show residents how to safely inject the drug what the hell it's estimated there's 12 000 people living on the streets in greater seattle this year alone seattle's spending 120 million dollars to combat homelessness and one of the big plans the city has are a series of tiny villages so that's what we're going to do seattle has a list of all the new villages that are springing up where it aims to house its growing homeless population i'm skeptical of the plan i mean all the little villages we're going to see are only going to be able to house a small fraction of the homeless here and based on conversations i've had with residents in other cities with a homeless crisis what makes more sense might be solving the drug and mental illness problem so you wouldn't need as many homes but alas i'm not directing the policies here nor am i a seattle resident let's begin our journey to see seattle's grand plan to solve its homeless emergency on our way to rosie's village first established permanent little mini village in the city of seattle oh here it is here's one right here turn left then your destination will be on the left right in the middle of downtown or not downtown but there's a little village right here rosie's your destination is on the left so here's one right here we're in a little area north of town and inside this fence is it's fenced in so they're protected right now we're going down to an area that's east of downtown it's called seven hills park and traditionally there's a lot of homeless tents unauthorized camping going this is seven hills park this is not supposed to be allowed but it is a thing and we're right in the middle of a neighborhood kind of a nice neighborhood too some nice homes and right here in this old park is a homeless camp now you moved to seattle recently and you've got some perspective on um you know the los angeles homeless scene i know you were homeless for a while um so you have a unique insight into the seattle homeless situation yeah um i just wanted to kind of ask you you know if you could kind of give people an idea on like what's happening with the homeless problem in seattle right now yeah so actually this is my second stint in seattle and so i lived here in 2018 for a year and it's you started to see some of the effects of the policies and just like you know what same stuff that's been happening in every city for like the last 10 years um but now that i came back it's uh like you said it's not as bad but it's because they they know where to hide now especially during the winter um where they've moved into is to the parks so this is a that's a big problem in all these like really nice well-to-do neighborhoods in seattle that's where they are and it's because they're very upset so i will give this to the seattle homeless they're making a statement they're moving into the neighborhoods they're moving into the parks to say fu we are tired of this you treat us like [ __ ] you don't care about us so they're just that's that's kind of like a little bit different than what's happening in l.a because la they control them you know they tell me you don't come here you can stay in venice you can spin uh downtown you know but in seattle it's free-for-all man uh heroin's still a big deal up here as well that never really left the area uh there's i know i go to libraries frequently here because i travel around and do filming so uh there's needle dispensaries as soon as you walk into the front lobby of a library it's a little concerning they're in the bathrooms they're everywhere here dude so heroin is still a really big problem here apparently we're coming up on another one of these little teeny villages this one's called north lake village and it's only a mile from the first one kind of under a bridge in an industrial part of town some of these used to be temporary and then somebody donated the land so these people could live you can see it's right here there's another one it looks like the first one we saw we've got just maybe 20 or 30 little houses behind a fence right in the middle of some kind of an industrial area i think they used to camp here and then the city got them to donate the land please help us move we need a new location look you can see there's a shower in there in the back like a little common shower and uh that's sort of what they're trying to do i think there's probably 30 no there's not even 30 i'd say 20 in there but i mean how many of these can you build to house the thousands of people in this city all right we're gonna go to the next one now there's another sorry i'm just gonna keep talking cause there's a lot to talk about there's a this really pissed me off too because i came up here to to help the homeless situation as well and i wanted to get involved with the organization called we heart seattle and they're strictly a volunteer organization they don't get paid by anyone they strictly do this out of the kindness of their heart so about two or three weeks ago the the governor or not the governor the mayor of the city uh issued them a cease and desist order to say hey sorry you can't help the homeless anymore please don't go pick up trash anymore please don't um give them clothes they've helped 68 people get off the street they're not allowed to do that anymore because of uh they're disruptive can you please tell me how volunteers that don't get paid have no contract with the city god of kindness of hearts are being disruptive to the society i that blows my mind too so i mean there's an argument that i mean i've heard a lot of people say it's a money grab like the city makes money or profits on the homeless problem or somehow benefits by encouraging homelessness and drug use and i is that is that true why would they do that is that true like how would that work like is there a reason the city would want to have yeah no i've heard this in la2 and in la you can prove that because um of all the like the that triple h policy that they passed there's there's paperwork that actually proves that they're trying that they're making money off in l.a seattle's a little different um i it's a little hard to quantify why they're doing this i mean i know why because they just they they want they don't care about you and they just um they're trying it seems like they're like just trying to destroy the city i swear it's just what it seems like it just seems like they just want to make the city as crappy as possible and um just ruin the infrastructure and just it's just it's to me i think it's just easier for them to just say um it's kind of like san francisco here dude where they literally like they can do drugs here they don't get busted for stealing they don't you know they can pretty much live wherever they want um so again that's just seems to be the liberal theme is to just further degrade society in that way and not help these people and further i mean they'll give them drugs they'll give them like you said in your in your um san francisco your tenderloin same same crap here they give them drugs they give them needles they give them their needles so i mean they're not helping the problem obviously they're perpetuating it so it's very very confusing yeah and they actually show them how to um take the drugs yeah here's how you here's how you inject it uh yeah yeah this is lake union village it's pretty much downtown it's kind of the same thing we saw before just 30 or 40 little mini places right here i'm doing like a documentary on this whole thing that's going on this is great can i is there a way i can like talk to anybody or i'm the manager can i sit down with you for a couple minutes and do a quick little interview you need to talk to josh castle or i called him and he didn't call he was going to call me even call me back in her bay yeah there's like a brand new one going on and he said that there's like 20 or 20 of these so far and there's like 30 each that's like 600 people yeah how many how many total is this does seattle have that they're trying to house oh i think i have nine 900 no uh no i mean like 600 will that make a dent i guess that's the question thank you all right so he wasn't going to let me in there he didn't want to talk because they've got people that officially speak on behalf of the plays but again another little village right in the middle of downtown i guess i mean if you lived here i don't know how you'd feel about it um you know if you lived in some of these fancy buildings if they're if they behave and they're good i guess you don't mind it's better to have them in there maybe but how much that spills out into the streets i don't think the neighbors are probably too happy about it i should talk to him on they're on the west side of town over by the or the football team place your destination will be on the right it's called inter bay village it's over by where the football team and the soccer team play from the west end of town i think there's another one up here yep this one we can actually drive right up into there's no gate there we go as you can see there's maybe 30 little small houses right here oh there's more there's these here and then there's a bunch over here so it looks like there's 30 or 40 small units here just enough for a bed and a table these people to live in maybe somebody will let us look inside all right so we're inside these are these little units that they're putting in [Applause] well this would be a little village we've got everyone's going to be staying [Music] money makers is old people's homes right now they're they're trying to build as fast as they can right but baby generation retirement house right so that's who i see here older people i see old and firm i worked 20 years on a roofer i fell through a skylight you know [ __ ] like that that's what i see here so it's not like the junkies that you see on the street that will be here there's an element of that uh there but you know what makes it junky you know who is it right here there's one right here i'ma jump you know so you know that they show on the tv some [ __ ] skeleton and that's not the truth it's uh everybody it's average people anybody everybody's one step away can i can i show inside how big it is yeah it's nice huh yeah just enough for a bed and a table that's all you need right bed cable heater 20 amp circuit yeah the shower trailers are pretty nice yeah and nobody they don't have to pay to live here or they have a small rent they pay it's free okay and another rule it's supposed to be a transition just try to get them to where they need to go yeah right safe place to be you know 24 hours of surveillance yeah is it getting worse because of the cost of living do you see more and more people like more and more needs well when it when when they did the when the covet hit there was like a panic like you could feel it i mean i mean you feel it everywhere but on the street it was really serious and things really changed around here things have never been here before now you know here i mean you never saw like street walkers okay so we just learned that there's they're estimating there's between a thousand and two thousand people that really need the most help and they've built 20 of these and each one has 30 so that's 500. so it is making a dent in getting people off the streets and he also said that a lot of the people that end up in places like this aren't necessarily your traditional addicts but sometimes it's old people that don't have anywhere to go seniors that are disabled um and they're really trying here and this thing's going to be opened up he said by christmas so like that's like two months there's going to be about 30 more people living in here and if they follow the rules they get to stay for free for as long as they want he also said that a lot of the homeless people come to seattle and don't get the job that they wanted and the high cost of living makes it tough and they end up on the streets and one thing leads to another and there you go so seattle is making an attempt here to get their people off the streets this one over here has actually been up and running here he's had for about six months there's a lot of people inside of there that are living their lives with warmth and heat and shelter all right we're gonna go to another one now and we're gonna see what's going on but i have a feeling they're all gonna pretty much look the same [Music] but this is just some random lot that's just maybe two miles from downtown that's been converted into a tiny home village and here's the other one that's been up and running for a while now looks like they're safe and sound inside their little community i need to get the trash people out here all villagers please check in with security as you walk in the gate please introduce yourself name house number no visitors are allowed they got a laundry over there a little common area well good for them these people need to be part of a community maybe it'll help them all right well so we're right by the airport here on the other side is the village we just visited and then three blocks away again more of this permanent temporary look no parking okay but man you see rvs and motorhomes all over this guy's pulling a boat just and you can tell these these people have been here for a long time there's more of them over here oh my god it goes all the way around the block this isn't even on the map and this is clearly not new look at this like to me this does not look like uh i lost my job recently and i'm temporarily homeless this looks like a lifetime decision intentional i'm gonna get a crappy rv and park it in seattle where's the it should be like a homeless person oh there's even more over there there should be like a homeless person heat map where they can all share insights into where the best streets are to park where you won't get harassed maybe they have that it's like you turn a corner and there's just there'll be like 50 rvs just parked somewhere that you would never suspect i mean we were right by the airport this is crazy okay so we're on our way to the next camp and there is just a row of rvs and homeless encampments or whatever you would call this this thing goes for like an entire block [Music] right here just on the southeast kind of in a really bad neighborhood part of town i don't understand who decides that's okay i don't know if somebody parks there and somebody else parks everything clearly clearly been there for a while because there's debris and cobwebs and stuff underneath all the rvs wow that is like a lot of people there were probably 50 people living on that one block i mean entire giant rvs like that winnebagos just parked there who knows for how long i don't know if those are the same people that are going to end up in some of these villages or if they don't want to live in a village i'm sure there's a little bit of both i think you're a lot more independent outside of the village i'm sure there's rules you have to follow if you live inside one of these little villages but wow that was a lot of people and we're literally probably three miles from downtown on the southeast side of town so i get the fact that the the the city would be motivated to make this city bad the leaders because it's a liberal thing like create dependency and then profit off of that um but the fact that they would shut down agencies that are just trying to help um just doesn't make sense i mean if you go to like a city seattle city council meeting and you you watch the recordings of it you see everybody's all pissed off you know the cops feel like they're frustrated the city won't let them enforce the law like you said um good luck calling the seattle police department on a naked man there's about five more naked men that they have to respond to that day so yeah there's nothing that they can do um is is seattle's homelessness at a point that there's like no return now i mean is there a is there like a thing that they're gonna do like oh we you know if the city's like hey we have a plan everybody relax we're gonna figure this out then i think people will be like okay let's see what the plan is is there a plan actually i think they just so i think we just got a new mayor and he's republican so he's going to come in here and kick somebody says so that's what he ran ran on is that uh when he gets in there he's really going to have uh social workers and everybody i think he's going to let the police do their job and they're going to come around and say hey you know here's some services here's uh here's your options but your option is to no longer stay on the street so apparently that's what i'm hearing that the plan is is that this mayor is going to come in and really clean it clean it up if he actually does it we'll see because we know how politics work uh some the left will come in with some sort of uh you know human human rights activists will come in and say something like oh you're violating their rights even though they're leaving their trash everywhere and there's needles everywhere and they completely don't belong in the parks but somebody won't fight it but so that's the plan up here that they have i hope that they actually go through with it and this mayor actually does um back up what he says but other than that if he doesn't no there's no plan they're just it's gonna get worse and worse and worse right close to downtown is another one of these little villages just in the middle of the neighborhood which is just crazy you can't really see or get in there either all these are walled in and it looks to be like there's a 30 or 40 right here true hope village so you can see you can clearly see they're doing a lot of gentrification down here around where all these camps are like what's gonna happen are they gonna build around these teeny villages and just let them be in the middle of all this new construction i don't know but you try to throw these people out and see what happens i doubt they're gonna move the villages i look up ahead there's like a camper an rv i wonder if they're looking for a spot to park because i'm gonna bet that they're not on vacation although they do have a surfboard on top and it says illinois so maybe they are they kind of blend in though who knows okay right now we're in an area called rainier beach if you're from seattle or the area you know this area well you probably haven't actually come down here very often this is considered the ghetto of seattle for those of you that live in an actual ghetto or know what an actual ghetto looks like you're gonna be like this is seattle's ghetto yes apparently so yeah so okay so i drove around and i saw there were about 20 teeny villages all over seattle and i went to as many as i could find there was anywhere between 20 and 50 little small homes i don't know if you've seen those um around town in different areas and i think at count there's like a thousand total little teeny homes scattered throughout seattle now they've got a they've got 15 000 people on the streets in seattle is the goal to build a teeny home for everybody is that part of what they're trying to do i don't see how they're gonna do that there's worse where they're gonna i mean i haven't seen these tiny homes so are they under the bridges or the freeways or where are they um they're scattered throughout so like uh there's a map the city of seattle has a map that i can actually show a link to where they've got like a different a list of all the little teeny villages and a lot of the land was either donated or they bought the land you know small little four or five acre plots where they've gone in and put little teeny homes in little makeshift villages look like little smurf villages um and they're all over the city and there's plans to build more um i i just can't imagine that they're gonna build number one can they build enough of these to support all the people and number two it's just gonna incentivize more people to wanna i mean if you're like hey they'll build you a little house and who's gonna have the motivation to get their life in order if they just everybody gets a free home well if you advertise that absolutely that's a big reason why people do come up to seattle because you get free drugs free houses free food free clothes you don't have to do anything you really don't so i would say they would probably want to build more tiny houses because that's more money coming to them that's more people they get to hire that's the more of the scheme that keeps that gets to keep going um also where they're living in though um especially now that it's starting to rain a lot they they're they live underground there are tunnels that they live in um um freeway overpasses are big too rvs rvs are the big thing here i see rvs uh all over the place especially in georgetown ballard dude there's a guy in ballard that has an rv this is crappy not this is on the news this guy has an rv parked on the side of the road and he's building a second story on top of it out of wood just just straight up on the side of the street building a second story on top of his rv and it made the news and this guy's just like oh you know i got carpenter's experience so i just felt like building a second uh floor on my rv and the neighbors are freaking out because like what if something happens what if this guy's going with the the roof caves in or something like something could happen what if it falls over on the subject like but nobody's doing anything this guy's literally got a two-story rv in ballard so i mean people get really creative where they go i mean people i mean if you live in this area people are really good at like being woodsy you know they know how to beat the rain they know how to put tarps over their stuff they know how to build like you know build you get those wood pallets and get yourself off the ground all that stuff you know so a lot of good campers up here so you know if you're homeless up here you know how to do it uh they know where to hide they know where to go so they go do their heroine and they go pass out for a couple days and then you see him again leaning in the middle of street somewhere okay so the area we're at right now is actually right next to king county international airport and we're headed towards a place called georgetown village which is another one of these little teeny communities way down here i mean there's a lot more room down here you'd think that this would be a spot where they'd put a lot of these little things but most of them seem to be closer to downtown okay so here we go again this is called georgetown village and clearly a lot of people have vehicles because there are a lot of cars parked outside we got a blm sign out there and it looks to be pretty similar to a lot of the other places that we've seen so far she's clearly about to begin her day at one o'clock in the afternoon oh unless she doesn't live there you're not supposed to have visitors in there we just caught somebody sneaking out these all look the same though this one's a little bit more beat up maybe it's a little older than some of those other newer ones we saw closer to downtown but it's in a really weird area this is like well this is actually the airport so right next door the airport which is very convenient if you are a frequent flyer you can just pretty much walk right onto your plane but yep t house little villagers probably looks like there's about 30 units behind that fence this one has barbed wire on it they they really do want to keep people out or in these little units so we're gonna do there's two more on the south side i'm gonna check those out of course we can't see every single homeless camp because you know they pop up all over the place you know they come and go as they please in what's clearly a bad part of town and i'm not saying graffiti means place is a bad part of town but i am saying a lot of graffiti is a bad part of town so right now we're going to another one of those emphasis spots where there's been notorious tents and homeless stuff set up all over i can see it off in the distance but it's like a really big circle because they just move around they set tents up and then they take them down and then people move and they come and go so you don't know exactly where they are but there are a lot of them supposedly in this part of town i could actually see them from the road but i don't know how to get down to him we're gonna try to see if we can find him so i think there's a bunch of homeless people down in this ravine somewhere but i ain't getting paid good enough well enough to go down there and find him you go down and find him they're down there i think they just live in the woods i would say that it's kind of like la where they make policies oh here's where here's how they make money in la is they hire all the contractors and all the people to do the planning to do the housing but they never actually do it because then some like bureaucratic red tape pop like people donate to this this kind of makes sense like the people that make that donate to like either private organizations or even to the government never really gets back to the homeless people it all goes to the politicians so that's why they have like this little system that they developed to where all the politicians are getting rich and homeless stay homeless yeah raise money to solve homelessness and then use a lot of the money to pass just like the election carries yeah you know how charities always get accused of like 90 percent of the money gets allocated to the people actually running the charity and only 10 goes to same thing that's how they make their money so they run it like a charity yeah no i get to i agree i mean i i tried to get some non-profits when i was in san francisco to kind of talk to me about the issue and they also they didn't want to talk to me and then the more i dug in deep i saw some of them yeah yeah okay so now we're going to an area that the city has drawn a map around as being an area where there's notoriously a lot of homeless people but your destination is on the left i don't think it's there anymore used to be kind of you can even see that there's like a big area oh wait there's some over here all right now we're on the south side of town not really far south but south of downtown and which is a really bad area and right here is another camp this is one that the city calls an emphasis camp meaning i think they circle it on a map as being an area of interest and concern perhaps they're going to come back one day and address it or just monitor the situation or try to keep an eye on these folks this is like been a hot spot for camping for a while now and it's kind of at the base of like there's the baseball field where the mariners play and then it's in between where the seahawks and sounders play there's big stadiums right here right here in the parking lot of where all the sports teams in town play you can imagine the stuff that goes on in there people have to walk back and forth to the games it goes all back through there underneath that bridge and you know that they're not camping out for seahawks tickets i'll tell you that it's funny you mentioned the thing in seattle with the guy in the rv that's building his own structure in portland there there was um they're actually laying cement um on plots of dirt where there'd be some tints and all of a sudden there's a structure and then they go back like two days later and their cement poured and they're starting to build are you serious wow yeah and then they have to go in i mean it's one thing to tear out tents and and tell people get out of here but it's another thing to rip out rebar and wood structures and like it's just a free-for-all up there man i'm saying though i mean it's just like people are fed up people are just they don't care anymore they know they can get away with it there's no cops nobody's gonna come and say you know sorry you can't stay here so welcome to america now dude like seriously like this this is driving around downtown you don't really see a lot of homeless people um in big camps like you do in los angeles and portland now seattle does have um some camps that are borderline regulated the city kind of allowed them to take over some of the sidewalk areas i guess anything between the curb and the sidewalk in an area where people are supposed to be unloading the city kind of like let them have that spot for a while and now apparently they're taking their streets back they're pushing people out of the downtown area there's an area downtown that they have not pushed them out of that we'll go see in a little bit but for the most part they're sending them out on into bridges um or they're moving out into areas that are out under bridges into fields kind of away from the city center or they're going into some of these temporary or somewhat permanent little teeny villages so you don't see large numbers of people in big groups downtown you'll see people sleeping in doorways and there are tents downtown but it's not crazy out of control like i guess it was previously okay the next one we're going to is pretty much downtown it's called lake union village and i think it's down like a an alley sort of right here you can see another one right in the middle of a little community they've fenced off there's probably 30 little teeny homes that the homeless people can live in and they have a gate apparently it's protected they got it made by the way seattle's chinatown is get tough ghetto ghetto ghetto poor chinese people have to deal with all this crap there's graffiti everywhere it's bad homeless people do not come to chinatown when you go to seattle just don't even do it it's like broken windows and graffiti and bombs that sucks okay we're coming up on it now it's called uh second chance camp some people call it myers camp it's way down here on the border of white center in south park and this is going to be the last the last one now the city has like 10 on their website 11 and supposedly there was like 10 other ones here but i don't know where they all are but here you go here's the final one listed on the city's bikini village list where they're trying to help people get back on their feet with some sort of temporary slash permanent housing solutions and no alcohol allowed let's talk to this guy what's up man i'm doing a documentary on the tiny village solution you know about that is there any way i can like just do a little like recording or talk to anybody or just do like a quick little two-minute thing um let me go grab the camp manager okay you'll be able to fill your mind all right thanks man all right so um using at the camp manager what i'm trying to do is basically just ask a couple questions is all um i was just gonna say no uh is there a solution that's if that's what you're gonna ask no there's not unless uh kind of like we said like you just are literally gonna have to go around and start forcing people to get off the street here's your options you can well uh we'll kick you out of the state and go let's stay somewhere else or here's your options get into the drug rehab program get into you know uh we'll put you back in educate these people give these people work skills i hear there's a labor shortage here here there's a bunch of homeless people wow let's how about we can uh give them some work and you know put them back and and get them back on their feet and respond have respect for themselves by going to work and actually earning their money instead of you know the government just handing it to him so that that's how i would solve it put him back to work but yes but yeah a lot of cities spend a lot of the budget on trying to build affordable housing for their population instead of addressing the underlying issue which is drug addiction and mental illness and um it's almost like you would think they would devote all their resources to get these people clean and sober and smart and motivated again and then help transition them into the real world so that they don't have to build a house for everybody instead of just sticking them in a place and then they go out and they're free to continue to use drugs and continue to create problems and steal and they have a home to go to a safe spot that they can then go back to so you don't really stop the problem you just spread it around and and put a band-aid on it instead of actually solving it you know so let's think of it this way why so listening to this way if you were able to live for free do your drugs do whatever the hell you wanted without anybody telling you anything to do why would you vote for the other party right so to me i think the democrats want this because that's a voter base that's just more voters that come in especially that's why they're allowing a bunch of illegal airmen to come in here because guess what when you hand them free money give them free food give them free housing why would you bite the hand that feeds you and they know that's just all psychology it's all political they know this so i think it's just a political ploy to keep well that's why they keep reisenberg that's that's why the inflation and the uh housing rising the rising housing costs are hand in hand right now is you're gonna see more and more normal people on the street so you're going to see two classic people here pretty soon you're going to see the the haves and the have nots and the have-nots are going to far outnumber the haves obviously so it's just that that wealth transfer that's going on right now there's just a major societal shift um i really pray and hope that next year's going to be better but i don't know it's from all the news that i see i know the more people i just do every day every day there's new people every day showing up on the street every day i i i i go to georgetown a lot and i see a new rv every day um they i try to talk to them up here they're not as friendly um i think that is that seattle freeze thing that happens um they kind of just go numb it's it's what's this seattle's actually rated the most depressing city and the people are the most impressed here i don't know why i think it's gorgeous up here i think depression is kind of like a a mindset that you allow yourself to have you can choose to be depressed or not that's just how i think but um a lot of people just want to be left alone and that's fine you know there's a lot of trauma that they deal with there's a lot of inner turmoil a lot you know people like you know are broken there's a lot you know especially around this time of the holidays holiday holiday times are the worst for homeless people it really is because they're not with their families and a lot of bad things happened around that time so it's unfortunate so you so you talk to the people in seattle that are homeless and you're trying to help as much as you can in the time you have is there a theme among the seattle homeless versus the homeless in los angeles or other areas like is there a difference in the type of population or the mentality among seattle yeah that's a good question actually so la's kind of a little more like uh here let me get along so la's a little more like kind of um it's a lifestyle choice like you literally had people from all over the world coming out there to live but you know oh i can live on venice beach and not you know just live in a tent do whatever i want awesome um there's still that like kind of hollywood thing where like everyone's got like a persona and like everyone's got like a little gig that they're doing and they're so important up here in seattle it's like these are like you know people don't talk about that stuff these are like local people that grew up from in seattle or around seattle tacoma or down the road so this is their home this is you know their family's close so it's a little harder for them they're not transients they're from here so it's kind of like a little more of a living nightmare for them every day because they're reminded of the past you know they see it their parents are could be an hour away 20 minutes away who knows you know so uh and like i said the heroin thing that really messes people up here too um that'll heroin compared to meth is very different if i had to choose and i don't want to choose either but if i had to choose i'd deal with a heroin addict because they just kind of zonk out and do their thing you know they you know you don't really have to deal with them all that much other than when they kind of wake up and they don't know where they're going but meth heads are the worst dude because they're up constantly and they turn into zombies dude like you cannot like they they're out of their minds and don't deal with methods they're the worst so i guess like that that's kind of going it's a little more compassionate up here i guess ellie's a freak ellie's brutal dude you know that like skid row is just like an animal just oh my god skid row's the worst um so there's nothing i like that there's no skid row up here there's no like you know venice beach versus out of control tents everywhere it's a little more spread out seattle's kind of like you know a little as you know it's a smaller city the downtowns oh here's here's the problem okay here's the difference between la and seattle i think it's a lot more violent up here look right that's a little weird to say that it's a little more violent in la la's the homeless they kind of just like keep it amongst themselves but here's the problem in seattle they attacked they attacked the public like a lady got uh sexually assaulted here two months ago by uh by a homeless guy that was office rocker in the women's bathroom and she was pregnant in the courtroom like this is ridiculous so um there's just a lot of oh man it's just like there's no there's no laws here so these people just come up here and there's a lot of washington is one of the least educated states so there's just a lot of degeneration that keeps perpetuating here and it's a vicious cycle and that's why it's a it's a local problem here more than a national problem like in l.a where everybody comes this is a more localized problem in seattle so mm-hmm yeah what this word on the street what's the what's the um the hope or the optimism um that the seattle homeless problem and the drug use and the crime and all that will get back down to where it was before the spike like are people optimistic that that's ever going to happen again is seattle ever going to be the same no everybody knows that there's this guy named sean reynolds who has a channel called summit properties and he talks about it all the time up here too and um even he's he's like a really optimistic guy but he's just been kind of like i don't see a solution here that like you know people are really like you know this is the first time they've voted for a republican mayor i think 30 years or something like a long long time so i think that's the first step you're gonna see but um as far as the homeless uh they kind of just that's no i oh god i wish i had such good news but i don't like i'm just i gotta be real these no they don't have any hope that they're ever gonna get off the street over that the government's gonna do anything to help them because they have the history to prove it the government keeps crapping on them i mean how do you how do you tell an organization that's completely volunteer that has nothing to do out of the kindness of their hearts to stop helping the homeless just don't pick up their trash don't don't get them off the streets don't even go around them cease and desist order you're not allowed to do this anymore that that that's just the epitome of what seattle's the leadership is all about right there they don't care and and and the homeless people know that so why would you have hope if you know that you're not cared for so that's it our homeless tour of the west coast we saw vegas the central valley oakland san francisco portland and seattle the whole west coast is a mess right now and what you just saw was probably the most complete look at the current state of the disastrous homeless issue here in seattle washington and i hardly showed you any of it there's pockets all over this place with trash and encampments and vandalism they need to take charge here and clean this city up or seattle might fall like other large cities in the country have fallen can seattle be saved we're about to find out it doesn't have to be that big to be uh i need a home i take anything that was given to me a home i need a home you're all right but i'm living nearby inside an rv you're at home and i'm out here and i'm just really sorry i just want a place that's a home to me a home we just need a place that's home [Music] a home a home is all we all need somewhere that we can be alone from cold i need a home we should all guarantee we have a place to be we need we need a home now you're all right but i'm living nearby inside an rv you're at home and i'm out here and i'm just really sorry i just want a place that's a home to me a home we just need a place that's home [Music] hey everyone so it's pretty clear by now that elected leaders aren't gonna help you if you don't like what you saw in this video demanding change won't work you're gonna have to do it on your own if you wanna be safe and want your community to be a place where people wanna live you're gonna have to clean the place up yourselves you're gonna have to work with your friends and neighbors to lower crime politicians clearly don't care as much anymore it's up to us this is sage nyx manager this has been a corner house entertainment production and are you looking to move and need advice i do consulting that's right i'll sit down and talk about where the next perfect place for you and your family should be i do it all the time together let's find you a new home that's safe and checks all your boxes you can get my email in the description to find out how i can help you find your perfect relocation

Channel: Nick Johnson

Views: 994,811

Keywords: the worst places to live in washington, worst cities in washington, washington, moving to washington, should i move to washington, washington realtor, washington mortgage loan, where are the best parts of washington, seattle, seattle realtor, is seattle dangerous, whats seattle like, whats washington like, seattle homeless, seattle vacation, moving to seattle, seattle suburbs, seattle downtown, seattle crime, seattle mortgage loan, tents, homelessness in seattle, seattle tents

Id: rvwyjeukJ94

Length: 56min 14sec (3374 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/vinegar_strokes68]

"Freeattle" was a new one for me.

[u/[deleted]]

Shipping containers could positively impact this situation. These little neighborhoods are an insult to the taxpayers when they could do so much more with that money. Why do they need real wood?

And who of these people actually lost their residence due to rising house costs? These funds are being wasted on impractical projects that only line the pockets of the already rich. And these Vegabonds are not locals and what’s happening is not normal. It’s disgusting and everyone needs to lay off the H

[u/[deleted]]

Another day in paradise.

[u/fors43]

Apologists will still claim it’s cost of housing, massive amount of ignorance

[u/Thunderball000]

And does anyone here have a real solution to propose? Or do you just want to bitch about the "wokesters" and city council. Want change? Volunteer or run for office. Bitching here does nothing

[u/Significant_Seat4996]

Welcome to hoboland funded by Inslee and his comies all for fighting global warming!

[u/[deleted]]

Asking for a friend .. where are these free drugs ?

[u/ohiocitydave]

First sign this person doesn’t live here? Dude calls University District downtown. Come on.

[u/Jolly_Restaurant_302]

You all don’t understand. The govt is doing this- it wants to keep ppl down and the services they offer are all for show. Most ppl in power are white or white passing and they don’t want to be usurped. They’ll have u arrested on false charges that they pull out of thin air, they’ll have your kids removed with no proof that you were abusive, this homelessness and crime is what they want. It will never go away.