by DCG
Seattle city residents keep electing demorats who do absolutely nothing – except raise taxes – to solve their homeless crisis. Instead of getting the mentally ill and drug addicted into treatment, Seattle bureaucrats merely shuffle them around and assign caseworkers to do who-knows-what (besides spending taxpayer dollars).
Sorry if I’ve got no sympathy left for these residents who are now upset with their local politicians for wanting to put low income housing in their backyard. Elections have consequences.
This will come as no surprise: NIMBY folk in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood are trying to stop redevelopment of a decommissioned Army base at Discovery Park. The city wants to turn the empty buildings into 238 units of affordable housing.
About Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood:
• The median home price is 140% higher than the Seattle average
• The median sales price of a home in Magnolia is $865,500
• The median home income is $108,612 – 73% higher than Seattle
According to MyNorthwest.com, a citizen group is fighting back against the City of Seattle’s plans to turn Fort Lawton, the decommissioned Army base at the main entrance to Magnolia’s Discovery Park, into 238 units of affordable housing.
Aerial view of Fort Lawton at Discovery Park
Excerpts from their story:
Spearheading the Discovery Park + 29 movement to save Fort Lawton is Seattle City Council District 7 candidate Elizabeth Campbell, who said that the city’s redevelopment plan will destroy a “jewel in the city park system” at a time when Seattle is already bursting at the seams with population growth.
For one, she pointed out to the Dori Monson Show, with the popularity of Discovery Park as an urban oasis, the Fort Lawton area is currently used for badly-needed overflow parking on busy days. “The park is already almost at capacity on weekends,” she said. “An immense number of people come through there … the park needs that additional land to expand and maintain its integrity as a natural space.”
According to Campbell, the city is refusing to think long-term by ignoring its own parks plans, such as the 2017 Parks and Open Space Plan and Comprehensive Plan.
The city’s plan for Fort Lawton includes three categories of housing — flats and houses for renter households at 60 percent of the area median income, townhouses for owner households at 80 percent AMI, and “homeless supportive housing for older adults, including veterans.”
It goes on to describe that the supportive housing would include onsite case managers, and that addiction and mental health service providers could possibly be brought onsite as well.
Campbell said, however, that the wording is disingenuous, noting that it would be not only the residents of the supportive housing, but also the residents of the units of affordable housing, who would “have issues.”
“It avoids the problem of describing really who is going to be there … the plan is for the city to monitor and have programming in place 24/7 for every level of resident that they have there,” she said. “So, I mean, it’s a highly problematic type of compound that they’re establishing.”
Read their whole story here.
DCG