[homoe]

The homeless are fed and embraced across the country at Thanksgiving. The rest of the year? Cities are pushing back!

It just slays me now how all of a sudden, within these past few years, public elected officials have sat up and taken notice of the homeless problem! Perhaps they thought if they ignored the problem long enough it'd just go away??

When I moved to Seattle in 2002 there were homeless living on the streets but it wasn't ever addressed as I remember. If some event came to the city they'd force the homeless to another area so as not to distract from whatever was happening. Other than that mostly it wasn't mentioned or reported on!

Within these past years Seattle has experienced a building boom! Downtown, West Seattle, Ballard, the list goes on and on. Developer swooped in and bought up properties, tore down perfectly good affordable housing only to replace it with condos or rentals units that were far beyond the cost that the average working stiff could afford. The rub was, often times there were zoning laws that should of prevented this but mysteriously *cough cough* got changed in quick order!

So now, with so much of the once affordable housing gone, is it any wonder there is even more of a homelessness problem. The Mayor of Seattle, the Common Council, the Board Of Supervisors, etc etc are all running around now like chickens with their heads cuts off trying to come up with solutions to this problem when they should of been paying attention all along!