Dori: Green Lake homeless encampment highlights Mayor Durkan’s ineffectiveness

A giant camp run by SHARE/WHEEL has popped up near Green Lake, and Mayor Jenny Durkan’s response to this Green Lake homeless encampment is unbelievable.

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The neighbors are understandably very anxious and upset, because where these homeless encampments are, crime skyrockets. That’s just a fact.

Mayor Jenny Durkan says that she is “evaluating the best approach” to this Green Lake homeless encampment, as per a statement that her office made to our news partners, KIRO 7 TV.

What do you mean, Madame Mayor, that you are “evaluating the best approach?” How do they not have policies and procedures in place to deal with this immediately? This has been the dominant issue in Seattle and throughout our region for longer than you have been mayor. There has been no issue more prominent. And you still do not have an automatic approach, a policy in place for these kinds of situations?

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There’s nothing to “evaluate” here; everybody knows what the best approach is. You say, “We do not tolerate any public camping in any public space.”

If a church wants to host an encampment, it can — it’s a private entity. A private business can do so — it is a private entity. But we do not tolerate any camping in our public parks, on our public beaches, on our public right-of-ways, or on this strip of land near Green Lake that the public owns.

Everybody says, “Where will they go?”

Ideally, they will go outside of the Seattle region. But, because we have made this the easiest place in the country to be homeless — along with San Francisco and Los Angeles — they will want to stay.

You can use drugs and shoplift without any fear of prosecution. You know that the cops will get suspended if they tackle you because you’re brandishing an ice ax downtown. You can camp on public spaces. Of course we’re one of the worst cities in the country for drugs and crime and homelessness.

And Jenny Durkan still doesn’t know what to do about it? In the years that she’s been mayor, they don’t have an automatic response?

This is very revealing of how ineffective Jenny Durkan is as a mayor, and as a steward of our city and citizen safety.

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