Stop Seattle From Turning Our Parks Into Homeless Encampments

As a family who uses our neighborhood park on an almost daily basis, we respectfully request you do NOT allow homeless to camp in Seattle Parks.

This is completely outrageous! Our State and Seattle forefathers worked hard in planning these parks and open city spaces for the enjoyment of ALL citizens! Opening them up to homeless camps will make them completely inaccessible to the majority of citizens, who I might add are your taxpayers and voters!! This is NOT a solution to the homeless housing problem, and it is unfathomable that you, our city council, even considered it an option. Get off your **%** and look to any other industrialized nation in Europe, Scandinavia and Asia, and see how it's done. If they can't keep it together, respect and follow the laws which govern us all, then they need further help and shouldn't be on the street in the first place! Drugs, alcohol abuse and filth breed in these camps and allowing that behavior, much less giving them special rights and status to our PUBLIC PROPERTY is unconscionable! SHAME ON YOU!

Not the solution - not even a step in the right direction! Please do more to treat people MEDICALLY who need help with addiction and mental health issues. Also, please don't let people go bankrupt because they of medical bills.

I have 5 children who have soccer practice and other activities at these parks. Several months of the year in the dark. We need clear sidewalks. This is no solution for housing those in need.

Please do NOT pass this bill. Keep our public spaces clean and safe for ALL to enjoy. It is very shortsighted to think that this is a plausible solution for homelessness in our city. Our tax dollars support our public parks so that we can enjoy them, not to subsidize camps for the homeless. In the year 2016 I would expect that we are intelligent enough to come up with smarter solutions to our problems instead of just forfeiting what makes the city a beautiful place to live. Protect our parks, where our children play, where tourists visit, where we breathe! Even without this bill our city is already suffering from the consequences of a increased homeless population. Why on earth would you propose to make it worse?

Strongly opposed to this council bill

This is not a viable solution

Stop his now!!!!!!!!

It failed in Portland. The city won't be able to keep track, and keep safe and sanitary, homeless encampments all over the city. This is NOT what our parks and greenbelts are for.

I believe we need to have safe places for homeless people to camp. I also believe there need to be sanitary services at those places and they need to be monitored. Please do not allow camping in unmonitored greenspaces.

Dear City Council -- your constituents don't want this legislation. Our kids deserve better.

While I believe the homeless problem is terrible in Seattle - this measure to essentially remove safe, green and peaceful parks from public access is neither a short term nor long term solution. I do not believe that the homeless take precedence over the safety of our children- who deserve safe, green environments in which to play. I do not believe that the homeless take precedence over citizens who deserve a clean, safe and pleasant green space for which they pay taxes. The fact is, the homeless encampments are unsafe. The inhabitants are not just down on their luck - many of them are mentally ill, or addicts. Many of them are unstable, on drugs and carry weapons. The city needs to work harder to find spaces for the homeless - and not reject offers of Paul Allen who volunteered to create housing for the homeless. The city needs to take the homeless in THEIR buildings. Encampments along highways or in the jungle are preferable to permanent encampments in public parks. The city of seattle needs to step up the services to the mentally ill, addicted as well as the services which boost people into jobs - and not so willingly sacrifice the cherished green space of seattle.

Parks need to be safe for families and children. We pay taxes for their proper uses and being a bandaid to resolving homelessness is not one of those uses we pay for.

Horrific idea

Please also work to improve the safety of kinnear park. I've lived here for years and it's only recently that I've felt unsafe in the park. This situation is hurting everyone involved. People facing homelessness deserve much better than to live in a park. These circumstances only raise tensions in our communities.

We need a real resolution, not a band aid that only prolongs the issue. We need leaders, not a bunch of social activist that only truly seem to care about their resume for the next office they seek!

Please not in parks and greenbelts. Think!

I use the arboretum many times a week, and have already been threatened by a homeless man there. I have also been involved in giving aid to homeless encampments and know the additional dangers they bring. I wish for safety and a lack of garbage in our beautiful parks. We donate money to keep them up, and they should be places of beauty and safe to escape to after a hard day at work.

This is a terrible idea that will be readily remembered by all voters next election.

This has got to be stopped.