Could they combine this neighborhood with the strip club neighborhood? i'm no urban planner, but it seems like a win-win.

...permanently damaged human beings stumbling up and down streets, or being held up by store walls, or completely collapsed on front yards and sidewalks. For them, there’s not a drop of hope; from crust to core, each smelly, each practically dead, each hardly a human any more, and because they cant even fend for themselves, hardly an animal.

Charles said it best in an earlier post. These are insects. No neighborhood wants them

Good luck convincing the opposition of that. They love vitriolic name calling.

from the taking-the-high-road...this-time dept.

yeah, sweeping generalizations are lame and don't do anything to further discourse.

It isn't fair that the poor homeless be dumped specifically in a neighborhood that is the politically weakest, not to mention the most dark skinned and poorest. It would be much fairer to disperse the services and the homeless housing throughout the city including the more well to do areas, e.g., Wedgewood, Wallingford, Ballard.

Perhaps the new center should be built in Lauralhurst. Put it right in Magnuson Park instead of overly lit playfields for pampered kids.

Let's see how high minded the most-rapidly appreciating neighborhood in the city would be if confronted with a housing project for mentally ill homeless people.

Ugly rhetoric aside, it is absurd to concentrate so many social service agencies in an already struggling neighborhood. If you're going to throw anyone a sandbag, don't pick someone struggling to stay afloat. Give it to the guy in the yacht.

It'll be perfect - with the planned Alcohol Impact Area, the chronic drunks will all be in the Rainier Valley already.

Social services that aid the very poorest populations tend to be located in areas with lower property values. The less money an organization spends on rent, the more money left over to spend on achieving their organizational goals. Non-profits are called that for a reason. Rent is one of the biggest fixed expenses for most of them, and it generally behooves them to keep rent as low as possible.

Also, there is the practical matter of where to locate services that serve people who frequently lack automobiles. The posher neighborhoods tend to be harder to get to and from. The people in these programs could easily spend all day criss-crossing the city by bus trying to get between the various services on which they rely.

While NIMBY-ism is a factor in determining the location of organizations that serve these marginalized populations it is not the only factor. There are other practical considerations as well.

There is facility like the so called "Roach Hotel" in Belltown. It is the least of the neighborhood's concerns.
The stand out worst case of Nimbyism in Seattle belongs to Luarelhurst. They object to Children's Hospital having a Helicopter Pad. It seems there sense of privelige trumps dying children.

If we locate the social service agencies and the homeless housing in the same area in the more well to do neighborhoods, we go a long way toward eliminating the logistical issues toward locating in those areas.

However, it won't eliminate the crybaby nimbyism that will result.

Isn't Magnuson park owned by the city? Aren't there old barracks that could be renovated? A social services agency could use any facilities rent free!

And the 75 bus, with frequent service and long hours, runs right up sandpoint. The 74 winds right through the north end of the park.

I heard about the evac helicopter thing. That's just crazy.

I love the idea of putting a residential social service facility there.

Laurelhurst!

Be very careful here people. The activist social left was completely destroyed on the East Coast because they perfected the fine art of steamrolling the opposition into silence.

Oh, you can shut people up - actually, that's easy. Shame them for objecting, call their motives into question, make them look bad for resisting such a high minded wrecking crew and its noble social plans. I already see Hobson et.al. taking just such a tone. Its sadly familiar.

Make no mistake, you may jam the plan through but wind up paying an unexpected political price. You won't even know it until the evisceration is complete and you and all your issues are moribund.

Like Habermas says... Never mistake silence for agreement.

Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about poor Rainier Valley. Thanks to the impending light rail, it's already pricing itself out of being the most affordable neighborhood in town. Read this article for more info:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/274449_gentrification19.html

All this is to say that you could build VIE emergency housing buildings in Hillman City and it wouldn't stop property values from going through the roof thanks to light rail prospecting.

Typo alert: when I said VIE up there, I meant "FIVE." (weirdest typo ever)

"It isn't fair that the poor homeless be dumped specifically in a neighborhood that is the politically weakest, not to mention the most dark skinned and poorest."

Columbia city and the 37th district are hardly the darkest any longer. The Columbia city corridor which starts in Alaska and ends in Hudson looks more like Freemont and the gentrification is pushing south towards Hillman city, my neighborhood. Its unstopable. As a friend once said, once the italian joints and the gelato started being sold, it was time for poor folks to move to Skyway and Renton. The lot in Hillman city on Rainier is empty so its fine to mix it up a bit. Gentrification should chill, after all, they took Columbia city and Im sure Hillman city is going to be filled with black clad white kids who will soon be followed by fleece wearing gelato eating folks who cant afford to buy houses in Freemont. Keeping poor folks out of a neighborhood that has been rapidly changing is not going to stop gentrification or keeping the neighborhood diverse. thats a lie. I do agree that more of these projects need to be built in places like maple leaf and ballard, but im sure the city council lacks the cojones to do it. we will see if they indeed want to build these projects througout seattle.

My wife and I bought a fixer in Hillman City two years ago this month. It has been interesting, watching the neighborhood change, I can recall eavesdropping on visitors to the neighborhood from Mt. Baker, etc., commenting on how different the neighborhood seems. Some newcomers to the area act like they've landed on the moon when they walk through Hillman and Columbia City. It's weird to see gentrification and inflated housing prices at work. When I rented in Fremont in the late '90s it was similar.

My wife and I have not succumbed to NIMBY re: the Corrections Connections center at Orcas and Rainier. I catch the bus to work across the street from this place every morning. I guess I'm not really sure where community outreach organizations are "supposed" to go, as if "this kind of thing" is supposed to be a better fit for relatively priviledged White neighborhoods, as presumably opposed to my neighborhood, transitioning out of years of poverty, the legacy of institutionalized racism, etc., in which I am a gentrificating Latino newcomer. I don't know where one is "supposed" to build one's halfway houses or NA/AA clinics, detention halls, etc. I am not going to worry too much about the value of my house, I guess. When we were buying Hillman and Columbia Cities were neighborhoods we could afford to buy in, period. We were DINKs at the time (well, we are now, too), both working for non-profits, not bringing in "a ton" but not bitterly struggling to stay alive...our alley is choked with blackberries, our lawn with every species of weed in western WA. In addition to being able to afford a 100-yea-old fixer, the reason we bought in this neighborhood was the desire to see a neighborhood's changes, and maybe to be a positive part of those changes.

Eh, I ramble. I catch the #7 by this "Roach Motel" sign, and a large abandoned lot filled with blackberry brambles, each evening. I should perhaps pay more attention to this controversy.

On that last note: the URL Erica posted isn't working...

Just to set the record straight for all you NIMBY-types, there are similar projects being planned in Ballard (Olympic View) and Lake City (Lake City Homes). Such buildings have already gone up in South Lake Union (Denny Park Apts.), First Hill (Cabrini Apts) Queen Anne (Queen Anne Gardens), etc. King County's 10-Year plan-to-end-homelessness specifically calls for these developments to be spread throughout the city. And you know what? They are being built and the plan is working. More than 1,300 low-income units have been built in the last 18 months, and nearly all of them have provided homes to homeless people!

The Columbia City housing controversy is another sad attempt by that beleaguered neighborhood to restrict the incoming population to the white and affluent. It was awful how Columbia City railroaded Centro de la Raza out of town, it was a shame how they tried to cheat themselves out of a lightrail stop, and it will be tragic if they succeed in denying homes to some of Seattle's neediest peole.

And Belltown is full of big new homeless units with more coming! The city's most gentrified neighborhood is far more progressive then the Columbia City fear mongerers! Put that in your NIMBY pipe and smoke it!

And the old Sand Point Naval Station (next to, not part of, Magnuson Park) is already being used in large part for shelters and transitional housing, with quite a bit more to come.

"It was awful how Columbia City railroaded Centro de la Raza out of town"

Huh? Is this the same thing as "el Centro de la Raza" on Beacon Hill? Unless something has happend in the last few weeks, it's still very much there.

Actually, there are several social service housing projects in Laurelhurst - one in the Magnisun Park barracks managed by SPCHA, and one nearby managed by the Low Income Housing Institute. Here's a link to a letter from the Laurelhurst Community Club asking the City to not cut funding for the programs.

There is more social service housing located north of Yesler than south of Yesler.

I live on North Beacon Hill (Rainier Valley side) and don't have any problem with the social service programs in the area. By their very nature, most of them are self-contained and keep their distance. We have a rehab facility just down the street from us, and it never causes any problems. Most of our neighborhood troubles come from petty crimals, vandals, and hookers.

OTOH, When I lived on Summit Avenue on Capitol Hill, there were some facilities that were real problems for the neighborhood: fights, EMT calls, crazy screaming all hours of the day and night. I don't know what the difference was, but I wouldn't want to live by a place like that again.

"OTOH, When I lived on Summit Avenue on Capitol Hill, there were some facilities that were real problems for the neighborhood: fights, EMT calls, crazy screaming all hours of the day and night. I don't know what the difference was"

Purer Heroin? Meth? More Sex?

@21--I think Gurldoggie meant to say "Casa Latina."

Yes, my mistake.
It was Casa Latina that wasn't allowed to set up shop in the Rainier Valley.

The Sand Point programs aren't going to lose funding; they're gaining it. Fremont Public Association is taking over for the SPCHA and part of the LIHI stuff, with much more to come.

Probably the most interesting conversation on Slog this week so far, hijacked by trolls. Are you all sure you don't want to mandate registration to post here?

I dig the libertarian, "let everyone say what they want enencumbered by restriction" thing that you've got goign on. But just saying: I read the first five posts and gave up because I have a ton of homework to finish.

I've seen worse, Schmoo.

Good thoughts all around.

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