It's hard to wrap a mind around this. Is the homeless problem on the Left Coast getting better, or worse? The pour souls in L.A. and San Fran are basically tent dwellers. But in Seattle there's an upscale flavor, with more than a few doing the RV thing.
I made two trips to Seattle in the late 1980's. It was a very neat place to visit and had very little of the crises they face now with homelessness, crime and the fetid stench of Antifa.
These are all crises of their own making and human nature being what it is, the dive is deep. They all have similar sanitation issues, though. Via HotAir.com:
Using Environmental Protection Agency wastewater pump-out and treatment statistics, it’s estimated that Seattle RV campers likely discharge more than 1 million gallons of untreated sewage annually into our waterways, including the Duwamish Waterway and Salmon Bay…Here on the Gulf Coast, people tend to get animated when a few thousand gallons of partially treated effluent is spilled accidentally. Those accidental flows are almost always (1) a result of very heavy rainfalls, (2) result in self-reporting by the parties responsible, (3) lead to universal media coverage by local news outlets.
To better understand the potential impact of RV discharges, the Sodo Business Improvement Area and Ballard Alliance commissioned Anchor QEA, a Seattle-based environmental science and engineering firm, to evaluate existing water-quality data and collect a storm drain water sample from a heavily populated RV parking area in Sodo. The sample from the storm drain in the midst of the RVs registered 300 times greater than the state water-quality standard for fecal coliform bacteria…
While a more definitive pollution-identification study is needed on the relative impact of illegal black-water discharges, the data points strongly suggest that illegal dumping of sewage and trash, along with unsanitary conditions in unregulated RV encampments, increase public-health risks and could result in serious outbreaks of communicable diseases such as hepatitis A and typhus.
That million gallons yearly in Seattle is in addition to whatever accidental spills may occur. In a city the size of Seattle, with rainfall patterns close to ours... the scale of pollution must be breathtaking (pun intended).
Station KOMO did an hour-long special (embedded below) on the overall homeless problem. If you watch the whole thing, prepare to come away shocked.
This is why we just can't let the Left export this disease to the east. I could spend a whole bunch of blogspace on the economics of homelessness, but the short takeaway would be that there's a supply crunch. Same thing with healthcare (but that has demand issues, too). Limiting supply is a sure way of driving up the cost of anything. Healthcare and housing are both under attack, though this only focuses on housing.
People out west are forced to choose housing over healthcare and/or transportation and many end up losing both. The result is RVzuela in Seattle and Tentezuela in L.A., because the left thinks more government control is needed when it is government control that's causing it all. Madness.
Thank God we still have some small sense of sanity here in happily Red Alabama. Let's keep the standard of living cheap here with lower taxes, fewer regulations and inexpensive housing.
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