Seattle is starting to look like a garbage dump

The Pacific Northwest is a beautiful place, but Seattle is turning into a garbage dump rather quickly.

As I was driving through 7th and Cherry in downtown Seattle, I saw an illegal tent encampment under the I-5 overpass. It was a total mess. The photo above shows just a portion of the conditions.

More and more frequently, we’re finding sites like this. Whether it’s the mess in Ballard or the University District, the city isn’t moving fast enough to clean up this mess. It’s having an obvious negative impact on the quality of life on not just the neighborhoods, but on the homeless themselves.

Related: This is how you help solve homelessness

We’re told not to complain about what our neighborhoods are becoming. We’re called NIMBYs by Twitter trolls and mocked by bloggers who apparently think it’s compassionate to let people live in filth near freeway on-ramps. I don’t think that’s compassionate.

In fact, by not intervening, we lack compassion.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has announced there’s a homelessness emergency, but it still seems like the city isn’t taking this emergency seriously enough. We’re burning $35,000 a month on an RV safe lot that only services 20 people. It was so expensive, the city said no to the second promised lot. They didn’t vet the idea properly and now we’re stuck with it.

We could be using the money to build tiny homes and other forms of affordable housing. It’d be cheaper to get the homeless studio apartments than put them in these safe lots.

We need to do something. No one wants to live next to this filth, nor should we expect homeless people to live in it. Mayor Murray, what’s the long term plan?