Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The Republican's war on the middle class and the poor is why. Back in 60s and 70s the only place, with few exceptions, that you could find homeless people in the US was in major cities like New York, thanks to President Johnson's war on poverty. Then Reagan started the ball rolling with his reviling of the poor and trickle down economics. The rust bowl didn't help, but if the U.S. had seen that as a time to retrain workers and invest in its citizens it wouldn't have been as devastating. Instead, the government allowed businesses to use overseas tax shelters and other business practices that pulled wealth out of the hands of many into the hands of a few. Meanwhile, we had a huge influx of undocumented workers and H-1b visa fraud workers, causing loss of full time construction and computer technician jobs plus jobs in many other fields to less qualified and far lower paid workers, causing those workers to go unemployment and then spend their money on retraining themselves for new positions that may or may not have benefits while the new workers send their earnings out of the country. But hey, business owners did well in the deal. And yes, the Republicans were all for this because it was business-friendly. No thought about what it did for the economy as a whole and American citizens individually. And no, I don't hate immigrants. This isn't their fault.
Homeless people started showing up here and there on the PNW in the late 80s, with the trend growing enormously over the years. Our country has allowed large businesses to suck the money out of the country and this is the result. I would say the drug problem is partially caused by this short-sighted policy too because we're seeing the worst drug problem in places where there aren't as many employment opportunities and many people have lost hope.
Yes, I mentioned I came here myself as a homeless person 30 years ago, came from So. Cal, I just wonder why there is so much more now than then. (I mean, it seems like 10 or 20 times more looking under the West Seattle fwy...)
It was the 1980s when the word "homeless" even became a thing, yes, "homeless" up to then meant "hobo" and "wino" and "skid row," not someone holding a sign: "Will work for food" with their kids next to them.
I had a pretty good job in electronics and machining, I used to listen to those commercials in the 70s: "Get a rewarding career in high tech, don't let the future PASS YOU BY!"
But so did a lot of other kids, so there was always a glut of techs out there, and the pay was never what it was touted to be.
But it was overseas competition that almost closed our plant, we went from 240 employees down to 45 in two years and the whole nature of our business changed and became much harder. (this for a company that was established in 1948 and made parts for IBM, HP and many other big companies, we even had a few parts on the Space Shuttle.)
I came up here because if I were going to be homeless, I'd rather be in a place with more trees than telephone poles, it's hard to get by in So. Cal this way, and services are much fewer, in spite of what they say on the TV, I was allowed one small bag of food bank food every two months.
I had to panhandle, it was either that or eat out of the garbage, and in 12 years of homelessness I never had to do that.
But I had been around most of the country in the Air Force and knew where I didn't want to live, but had never been to the PNW.
Unfortunately funding for the homeless is like opening a giant bag of chips at the beach for the gulls, more and more will come as long as you keep feeding them.
Taking care of the homeless is one of our really difficult situations to deal with. Here in Alamogordo, NM, the homeless stick out like sore thumbs and don't stay. They may be put in a "care house" of some kind, I really don't know. But on a visit to Seattle in 2017 my wife and I took my older sister for a car ride downtown. We stopped at Dick's for a hamburger. We had our Pomeranian and Chow Chow in the back of our Kia.
This one homeless lady couldn't stop praising our dogs. She was trying to be as nice as possible, but, they were all over that restaurant and parking lot! She kept going to the back of the store to use their restroom - it's the one at the foot of Queen Ann hill, right next to the Seattle Center. This is my old stomping grounds - I grew up just to the north in Edmonds - and I never remember all of these homeless people just hanging out everywhere.
I don't hate them - they have totally fallen through the cracks in the system. However they're handled they're going to cost State of Washington taxpayers a lot of tax money to care for them. Maybe Bill Gates could chip a couple billion off his enormous wealth and...help out? Oh, that's right. Apparently that would more than anger Mr.Gates - that would just be wrong.
Sorry about my topic location - I didn't notice that this thread was about the homeless in Olympia, not Seattle. Most all of my discussion would apply to the homeless in Olympia, too.
Yes, I was stationed at Holloman for a couple years and rented a single-wide in "Alamo-goo-goo" (sorry ) for much of that time.
I grew up in the Southwest, San Gabriel Valley, San Berdo, Las Vegas, Tucson... then I was stationed in Alamogordo and then Clovis NM at Cannon AFB.
So they are getting pretty thick at "Dick's" huh, that's sad to hear.
I used to go to that one in lower Queen Anne back when I first got here, and I really loved Seattle (the PNW... Western Wa.) and still do, wouldn't dream of living anywhere else, even Hawaii!
This just really puzzles me though, the magnitude of it, all I can really think of is the opioid and meth crisis before that, the "economy" was much worse off back then, seemed so anyways.
And it's not some up-tick in services, I have to also believe it is that California is getting so crowded with it, just like in my time, Seattle was a natural haven for the California spillover homeless, not just for services, for many reasons.
I came up here by Greyhound with $155 and a surplus backpack and had never been here before, had no family and didn't know a soul.
I stayed in the Union Gospel Mission over there on Second by the lighting store my first night, and do you know, I had a job the next day at the Warwick Hotel washing dishes and having prime rib on occasion for a shift meal.
I went to a job interview in Factoria for an electro-mechanical tech, something I had more than enough skills for, (which turned out to be the reason I didn't get that job. ) and started camping next to Coal Creek right off the parkway there, lived there for months.
But later I discovered Issaquah, and that is my favorite small town (medium really) to this day, I lived there for years both homeless and housed, knew all the "townies," played the open mics with my 12-string every week, Issaquah will always be my adopted home!
It was the 1980s when the word "homeless" even became a thing, yes, "homeless" up to then meant "hobo" and "wino" and "skid row," not someone holding a sign: "Will work for food" with their kids next to them.
Thx
A little more on this.^
I spent a lot of my youth in West Covina Ca, a pretty big suburb and especially when you combine it with Covina and a few other adjacent cities.
And in all that area, I can remember just one homeless guy in our town in the early 70s, first and only one I had ever really seen outside of TV maybe.
He was a younger guy, maybe 30, kind of a hippy guy, we used to refer to him as "Mike the bum," but not in his presence, he was a very nice, soft-spoken guy and of course we didn't want to hurt his feelings.
He lived in the alleyway off of Hollenbeck, he used to ask us kids to get him a hamburger from the Alpha-Omega, gave us the money to get it, this because the owner wouldn't serve him.
And Mike was always filthy and greasy mostly from working on an old Buick Riviera someone had on blocks for him in their backyard, he slept in the back of the car.
The Covina cops used to buy him a new shirt every year for Christmas, that's how very few homeless there were in town, just Mike...
Fast-forward maybe ten years later and I am seeing whole families standing by while dad "works the sign."
I never really knew what happened to Mike, he really wasn't that much older than me, I hope he is doing okay and looks back at those times even fondly for some of it.
And... it wasn't easy, probably wouldn't have been my first choice...
But I'm actually glad in some ways it happened... ("In some ways"? I'm actually damn glad it happened!)
I can just see a guy still stuck in the So. Cal "rat-race."
Commuting back and forth for a significant portion of his life... with just about enough compensation to make it to the widget factory bright and early Monday morning like a rat in a maze...
Even when you have it good there it's not easy.
But "happiness" in the end, what's the value there? Is it worth some sacrifice?
My father, (like almost anyone you ask in So. Cal) wanted to retire to Big Bear in the mountains near San Bernardino.
Well, I have a retirement property with something they just don't have at Big Bear Lake...
That and more importantly, water like this to grow them... (trees like that are about 1200 to 1400 years old and consume about 700 gallons of water a day!)
And now I have my own company, have been in business for more than 12 years, and was semi-retired in my 50s... something I never would have imagined at my old job making someone else (or their rotten kid) rich.
But really... I believe I am a more understanding person now, and that kind of lesson, sometimes does not come very cheap or easy!
My only regret is that I didn't take my baby boy, my black lab Arnold with me, but I think of him every day, even though he must be up in the "paw-paw patch" in the sky for many years now...
The Republican's war on the middle class and the poor is why. Back in 60s and 70s the only place, with few exceptions, that you could find homeless people in the US was in major cities like New York, thanks to President Johnson's war on poverty. Then Reagan started the ball rolling with his reviling of the poor and trickle down economics. The rust bowl didn't help, but if the U.S. had seen that as a time to retrain workers and invest in its citizens it wouldn't have been as devastating. Instead, the government allowed businesses to use overseas tax shelters and other business practices that pulled wealth out of the hands of many into the hands of a few. Meanwhile, we had a huge influx of undocumented workers and H-1b visa fraud workers, causing loss of full time construction and computer technician jobs plus jobs in many other fields to less qualified and far lower paid workers, causing those workers to go unemployment and then spend their money on retraining themselves for new positions that may or may not have benefits while the new workers send their earnings out of the country. But hey, business owners did well in the deal. And yes, the Republicans were all for this because it was business-friendly. No thought about what it did for the economy as a whole and American citizens individually. And no, I don't hate immigrants. This isn't their fault.
Homeless people started showing up here and there on the PNW in the late 80s, with the trend growing enormously over the years. Our country has allowed large businesses to suck the money out of the country and this is the result. I would say the drug problem is partially caused by this short-sighted policy too because we're seeing the worst drug problem in places where there aren't as many employment opportunities and many people have lost hope.
Both parties are frankly responsible for this I'm not even going to call it the republicans or the democrats, I'm going to simply call it governments fault. Perpetual tax and spend policies together with stringent EPA standards and BROKEN tariff structures have encouraged outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing for the last 3 decades. Now we're going broke in trade deficit with China at a rate of HALF a TRILLION dollars each year while they use the dirtiest energy forms available and pollute the planet like never before =Triple loss. No jobs, no taxes(companies are now doing business overseas), and a record pace of global warming and pollution.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
) for much of that time.
