Rantz: Seattle’s homeless ‘tent mansion’ grows, adds a keg

The infamous “tent mansion” near the Seattle Center seems to be growing, adding one perk for its inhabitants to get through the day: a keg.

Though it’s an eyesore to neighbors and tourists, city officials have said the multi-tent encampment is a low priority for sweeps. Perhaps that’s why they felt comfortable enough to bring over a keg to the site.

This “tent mansion” has been up since early April, when KIRO TV’s Gary Horcher discovered the inhabitants refused help from the city, choosing instead to live on the street, than follow the rules of a shelter.

Spotted a keg at the “tent mansion” across the street from KIRO. My coworker @rileymichel said they had it operating the ther day 🤷🏻‍♀️🍻 pic.twitter.com/gHrqwmsYCg

— KIRO 7 Brooke (@KIRO7Brooke) June 3, 2018

“We don’t want to change our lifestyle to fit their requirements,” Melissa Burns told Horcher. “We intend to stay here. This is the solution to the homeless problem. We want autonomy, right here.”

The report says she moved here from outside of Washington state.

And while this encampment stays there untouched, with tents popping up all around the neighborhood, Seattle is starting to lose tourism revenue and conventions. Visit Seattle CEO & President Tom Norwalk recently told Q13.

For the first time over the last couple of years, we’ve lost conventions to other cities because of what we would call the street scene. I wouldn’t say it’s just homelessness, it’s more of a sense of civility and safety on the streets, cleanliness on the streets.

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