Suits: Is blaring music outside an encampment unfair?

A Seattle business that got tired of having a homeless encampment nearby started blasting classical music to get people to leave.

The encampment is on N 128th Street and Stone Avenue N in Bitter Lake, where a Comcast Service Center has been playing loud music from a surveillance system with a speaker.

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After the story was initially published by KOMO, some criticized the strategy that the business used to deter homelessness, including some residents in the encampment and other business owners in the area.

Host Bryan Suits shot back at critics that the classical music wasn’t hurting anyone and that having an encampment was actually unfair to residents.

“There’s the speaker, and the speaker is playing classical music. And guess what? That’s inconvenient for the homeless. What is good about a homeless camp? What’s good about tolerating people in tents?” Suits said. “Well, if you don’t live there, you get to swing by and feel like you’re doing good and then go back to your city-provided office or whatever. If you do live there, then what you get are used syringes, human feces, and other waste products of drug addiction. If your business is in front of that sidewalk, you know that you get less foot traffic and the whole thing, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that someone is playing classical music.”

You can listen to Bryan Suits’ full discussion on deterring homeless people here:

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