Stop Seattle From Turning Our Parks Into Homeless Encampments

Our homeless population deserves better. Our tax paying citizens deserve better. The homeless need housing, food and substance abuse treatment. They need jobs and daycare. Allowing camping in public places provides an inhumane temporary solution at best! Public land is by definition public - specifically not meant to be enclosed in a way that deprives others of its use. Camping prevents the greater community from using spaces as intended, diminishing the quality of life of those who live and work nearby. Public spaces make a city or neighborhood not attractive and livable. Destroying those spaces can easily lead to a downward spiral of urban decline as people move away from badly affected neighborhoods. This reduces tax revenues and limits the ability of the city to recover from problems. Allowing camping in public parks is not a real solution and only kicks the can down the road. Address the problem at its root by finding a humane housing solution!

This will cause confrontations -pitting people against one another and an increase in calls to the police. Public spaces are for everyone to share and enjoy but should not be homes for people. Only for the wildlife which will also suffer if we give up our commons.

Portland allowed this for 6 months before realized it was dumb, but their problem was that they didn't give it enough time... good point, lets give it 2 years instead!! Booyah, next item

The city needs to actually do something about the homeless problem, not just encourage more of it.

Tax Payers COUNT

The City Council (minus Tim Burgess) has gone "off the deep end", with good intentions, no doubt, in proposing an unrealistic solution to a real problem.

My work related duties on Northlake Way have brought me in recent and close contact with our homeless population routinely. It is an incredibly challenging moral imperative that our city faces. However, the thought of our beautiful parks being ravaged by the trash and debris left behind by homeless encampments is simply to much to bare. These parks were fought for and wrangled from the hands of developers so that our communities could enjoy a small piece of the natural world among our concrete lives. So that our stressed animal eco-systems can have a small area of reprieve.

Strongly against it.

This is not humane, won't be effective, and completely disregards the rights and safety of taxpaying citizens, as well as destroys the environment.

This is NOT the way to solve Seattle's homeless problem.

We need the mayor and Seattle City council to stand up for our rights to clean, safe parks and greens spaces. We can not allow people to camp in public places no matter where or who it is. Seattle parks and green spaces are on the verge of becoming a trash heap/toilet. This will make Seattle a beacon to everyone not only in the North West or the West coast but of the World. Come sleep in Seattle its free and no one will bother you. People will drive family members with such problems and dump them off in our streets. It will discourage tourism, we will see the cruse liners leave the city, it will discourage new business from moving to the city and it will cause other businesse to leave. People are sick and tired of the Seattle City council spending its time and effort where they should not. Please make Seattle a beacon for businesses and commerce to come to Seattle where it is safe and clean and beautiful. Please save our children, please save our parks and green spaces, help us, keep us safe!

You have lost your mind. Consider the danger you are exposing the other 99.8% of the population that are not homeless. Solve the homeless issues and don't make Seattle a go to destination for homeless people from other parts of the country.

Mostly concerned about the sanitary and environmental impacts.

Find a long term solution

As a mother that takes young kids to the parks, this bull terrifies me.

Please do not destroy seattle. This is no solution. It failed miserably in Portland. You will kill our city

Families should feel safe in our parks and fostering camping within uncontrolled environments has proven to be unsuccessful. Bring back Nicolas camp do not destroy our parks.

Stop this madness!!

Dumbest idea yet!! Never ceases to amaze me what our City council will try to shove down our throats!!

We strongly urge the City to provide a different solution to Seattle's homeless problem. Spreading the problem out over public land just makes the issue more difficult to manage for SPD and creates additional social problems for our communities.