Is a tax to maintain Seattle’s homeless camps the right answer?

Should they stay or should they go? If homeless campers stay in Seattle’s infamous “Jungle,” there will be trouble. And if they go, advocates will cause trouble.

To which KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross suggested they pay for it. That caused a divide at the KIRO Radio offices Thursday.

“I’m not personally mad at Dave, it’s just that a lot of people believe this,” Don O’Neill said during the Ron and Don Show.

Seattle’s Morning News reported Thursday morning on the divide between cleanup crews and homeless advocates. On one side you have the experiences of Washington State Department of Transportation’s maintenance crews, who report a series of concerns about the area — human waste, tunneling around the freeway, trash, needles.

There are also stories of dangerous interactions with Jungle residents.

On the other side, you have advocates who prefer that people are not forced out of the encampment and that the area receives sanitary services.

That prompted host Dave Ross to comment:

Maybe there should be a separate Jungle levy on the next ballot where you would pay a little more property tax to get proper sanitation and regular housekeeping service under the freeway, sani-cans and regular garbage collection, and maybe street names for the paths down there so it is a little more humane … At this point, I’m persuaded that if you are there, you are there by choice. Everybody from the Union Gospel Mission to the Salvation Army says if these people wanted to sleep in a bed, indoors, they could. But they don’t want to. So now they are down there by choice. Since they’ve made a free choice to stay there, and homeless advocates are making a free choice to say they don’t want the DOT to clean them out, then I guess what we are saying is that we want to tax ourselves to make sure it is a sanitary location so we don’t have some horrible epidemic or plague that breaks out – we don’t want to have fires that stop traffic.

Ross’ thought was interrupted that morning by President Barack Obama’s speech, so he never got to fully explain.

Don understands that Ross was being “tongue-in-cheek,” when he proposed a tax, but he worries there are people around Seattle who support similar ideas.

“I’ll pay a tax: a mental health tax and a heroin tax,” Don said. “I’ll pay a heroin hospital facility tax. I’m not paying a Jungle tax to leave people out there in the wind.”

“This is going to grow and get worse if we don’t reform our mental health institutions in this country and find a place to force people to go,” Don said. “You don’t build a road for them under I-5 so they can continue to attack highway troopers … Sometimes when people make these choices in society, that’s when we have to get tough.”

Ron Upshaw noted that some in the city have even suggested that plumbing be provided to Jungle residents.

“Even if you put plumbing and little pathways, and garbage cans, and [portable toilets] under I-5, it’s still going to be squalor,” Ron said. “It’s common sense — it’s trespassing. They are not allowed to be there. It’s illegal for them to live there, there’s a lot of stolen property … we can go on and on.”

Ron and Don’s conversation prompted Ross to call into the show from home and complete his Jungle-tax comment.

“When (KIRO Radio Reporter Josh Kerns) told me that there were homeless activists confronting the DOT saying, ‘You’re being too tough on people,’ that means they are saying they want to leave them there,” Ross said. “We now know it’s gotten to the point where people are digging tunnels under the highway and causing the pavement to collapse. That can’t be allowed to continue. That becomes a threat to the economy of the region.”

Ross said that WSDOT is already spending tax money to clean up the Jungle, and potentially more if a fence is ever erected.

“What’s clear is that building a fence and walking away will solve the problem for maybe 12 hours,” Ross said. “You have to do something that is game changing, something that is a complete cultural change under there … Now some of our gas tax money, for the Department of Transportation, is going into the Jungle.”

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