Comments on 143rd and Linden Avenue North

ECB has a car?

Yeah, right, dream the dream. Seattle will finally finish putting in sidewalks in the 70% of the city which don't have sidewalks. The new viaduct will have its ground broken tomorrow. Mercer Street will be a breeze to drive down, safe to walk along, and will have bike lanes to boot. Rapid transit reaching the whole city will be completed tout de suite. The monkey in my ass is also going to fly around Lake Union with a few pigs, why not?

HAD a car. It got towed.

it's not 70% of the city that doesn't have sidewalks, more like 30% but it's still super ghetto that there are parts that don't have sidewalks.

This is not new. I lived in Ballard for three years and 14th street just south of Market (behind the Safeway) had/has several vehicular residents. One woman, obviously mentally ill, is there all the time, shouting at her demons.

@5

You got any more of that K?

Come check out the bums sleeping in their vans and motorhomes along pontiuis down in the Cascade area. It isn't just the outskirts that are seeing this crap.

There was a guy living in a smallish, old 60's era RV near my house - I'm guessing his alternator was dead or somethingrather, as he'd leave it running to power the SATELLITE TV he had hooked up to it.

I am tempted to roll a moderately urban homeless scenario. I have a VW van, live on the west side, but work at MSFT. Some nights its not worth my time to drive back home just to drive back the next day.

I find the dark spot in the parking garage and sleep in my van at work. We have nice locker rooms and I'm pretty sure no one outside of my gf/family know that I even do it. The days that I don't crash in the van I commute by bus so it isn't uncommon for my van to sit at work for a week at a time.

Where I would like to take the idea is to start doing local camping along I90 or other nice spots away from the commute bottlenecks. Nature is a great balance to my ultra tech day job and I will definitely crash up at snoqualmie/stevens come snow season.

Any tips for places I should set up camp for a night or two? Big bonuses for places near bus lines.

@8 -I hear Bitter lake is nice

@5...that stretch in Ballard you mention was very recently rezoned no parking between 2 AM and 5 AM. Drove by there the other evening and aside from one motorcycle there was not a vehicle parked for that three to four block stretch. The first time in at least a decade that there weren't a couple of dozen broke down vans and RVs camped out.

Maybe they've all gone to Linden?

That part of Bitter Lake has had car camps there since at least the early '90's when I did home care at the housing project just north of the reservoir, as has the south end of Ballard, especially around the Ballard Bridge, and parts of S. Lake Union. It's not a new phenomenon in the least, but one that's become more noticeable as these formerly industrial areas become more gentrified and residential.

I always figured the "caravaners" selected these areas because the workforce in those areas was generally small, the buildings large, providing a bit of cover (in the sense that decrepit vans & RV's don't stand out as much), there's little foot traffic, and, except for Bitter Lake, almost no residents to complain about the noise, the garbage, and simply them being there in the first place.

I work for Your Friendly Local Utility, at the north end location (97th and Aurora-ish).

Our complex has some truly lovely landscaping all around it, but we also have our share of campers - particularly on the east side of the compound, where there are no driveways, just a block long tasteful brick wall and greenery.

The greenery is where the campers go to the bathroom (much to the disgust of the long-suffering gardener) and also where they (and various others) attempt to scale the aforementioned wall to steal copper.

On Beacon Hill, they park in the public lot off Beacon Ave. next to the VA Hospital.

live on the west side, but work at MSFT

Only lame ass MSFT employees say "westside" you might as well just move over there cause you already sound ridiculous. Go park in a wal mart lot.

Johnson believes that the lack of sidewalks in his North Seattle neighborhood is the main reason Linden has drawn so many campers.

Hell yeah. I live in NoNo, too (north of Northgate), and I have to say that the lack of sidewalks sucks big Winnebago, and it does encourage people to park ugly vehicles for lengthy time periods. Let's build sidewalks and walk places, OK?

However, Sgt. Newsom's got a hell of a nerve telling me which homeless people I do or don't "feel sorry for."

Homeless people on welfare or unemployment? The horror! Refusing social services the police refer them to? But the police are so NICE to the homeless! So nice they'll decorate their homes with pretty orange stickers and offer free relocation services to the nearest $120/day tow lot -- I mean motor home park. And when has anyone been displaying empathy for someone else when they say they're making a "lifestyle choice"?

"We’d like to make that into a livable street. "

Huh?

It's got TWICE the density it otherwise would have!

LOL

I find it hard to believe that the houses on those streets are now abandoned because a Winnebago parked out front. Those pigs! They are always such straight shooters!

Serious style points for the sawed off Winnebago with car in back! Nice pic! Thanks for sharing!

thank you, bitch on heels. i was blown away by her quotes. i really couldn't believe she said that shit on the record. maybe they should hire archie bunker as a spokesperson.

How exactly do sidewalks stop Winnebagos?

Sounds to me like a good place to do some 'gentrification'
Throw in a ton of zero lot line townhomes with the required luxo interiors.
Price them to include sidewalks.
With the 'housing shortage', there should be no problem clearing this mess thru the use of 'free market' actions!

Soon, the city will be gaining taxes from the occupancy densified area instead of expenditures for police and social services.

@18
Sidewalks mean pedestrians, and pedestrians mean onlookers.

To be clear, I'm not as worried about people's motor homes as I am about the half-abandoned vehicles that will never run again that line the streets of my neighborhood. People need a place to live, even people on welfare or unemployment.

But if crime is truly committed by the motor home dwellers, then the crimes will be quickly reported by pedestrians -- not as an indictment of the whole motor home community, but individually, when there is an actual problem. My guess: the crime is imported. Who wants to shit where they eat?

More on why sidewalks matter. In fact, I'm calling the city today to request sidewalks in my neighborhood. If you don't have sidewalks, you should call, too. DOT Pedestrian Program: 206-684-7583.

This stretch of Linden Ave N between N 130th and N 145th Streets is becoming a high-density residential area for low-income seniors as several new developments there open to augment the ones already there; nearly 1000 low-income seniors will be living on this stretch of road soon. It's a disgrace that this street doesn't have sidewalks on both sides of the street for some of Seattle's most vulnerable residents, who have to run a obstacle course of inadequate or nonexistent sidewalks and occasional high-speed traffic just to get to the Post Office or the Community Center, or to go to the market. This in a city that claims to be committed to the safety and welfare of *all* its citizens, and not just the ones who can walk, bike, bus, or drive.

For a better understanding of the plight of these Bitter Lake low-income seniors, read:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: 'Urban village' at Bitter Lake lacks amenity: Sidewalks
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/257428_bitterlake28.html

John C Todd, Jr.
Greater Greenwood Bi/Ped Safety Coalition

wouldnt it be cheaper and faster to just create zoned permit parking in the area while waiting for sidewalk plans to go through? does anyone know why they don't do that?

@ 18-

With a bigger Winnebago.

live on the west side, but work at MSFT

Only lame ass MSFT employees say "westside" you might as well just move over there cause you already sound ridiculous. Go park in a wal mart lot.

I work at MSFT and I have found if you say "the city" they stop saying "westside". It actually annoys me as much as anything and is one of those things that might make me leave seattle and never comeback

Sounds like Seattle has it's linguistic equivelent to FRISCO.

Dear Council President Licata re: Complete Streets and Linden http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYpTpzIshls

@25, my Dad (80 years old) still calls the city "Frisco", which never ceases to piss me off. He also called Montgomery Ward Department stores "Monkey Wards". That, which would also piss me off in the past, is now irrelevant.@22, that sounds about right.

I live in the Bitter Lake/Linden area, and often walk the stretch of Linden from 130th to the post office at 145th. It is indeed ghetto, but recently a trailer park was raised (incidently right across the street from where the Winnebagos and campers park), and like someone else said, there is a newly completed senior/low-income apartment building that is bringing 1000 more residents to the street this summer. Plus two more 400+ units are going up soon in the area... which leaves lots of pedestrains (many of them seniors) getting run over by speeding cars that use the road as an alternate to Aurora.

Personally, the campers haven't bothered me (except when I heard that there were a couple of felons living in one)... the lack of sidewalks in Seattle neighborhoods north of 85th (sidewalks that were promised literally 50 years ago) bothers me. And yes, the prostitution in the area bothers me. Linden is practically a dirt road littered with discarded condoms and needles... But a road with over 2000 residents and growing fast. How 'bout taking a look at the neighborhoods outside of South Lake Union, Mr. Nickels?

Sorry... correction to my #28... a trailer park was RAZED (not raised!). Big difference! :)

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