‘A waste of taxpayers’ money’: West Seattle artist says city overspends on annual $4M graffiti clean up

CVS recently purchased an old Rite Aid building in West Seattle, home to a large, ever-changing mural that local artists paint over and over to express their work. Throughout the years, more than 150 murals have been created on the wall, created by both local and internationally known muralists.

One of those local artists, Desmond Hansen, advocated for keeping the wall alive after the building changed hands and explained why, if Seattle took a more lenient approach to graffiti, taxpayers would save a substantial amount of money.

“Our city actually overspends on covering up graffiti, in my opinion, the evolution of wall space around the city, whether it’s illegal or legal, if it were kind of let go a little bit, it would evolve into more artistic behavior,” Hansen said. “The wall in West Seattle is constantly evolving. Sometimes, there might be some areas of it that look like scribbles and not very appealing artistic graffiti or murals themselves, and then those evolve into nicer, artistic, more colorful displays.”

West Seattle muralist argues city-sanctioned walls reduce ‘scribbles,’ save taxpayer dollars

Building on his comments about overspending, Hansen noted that graffiti in cities is immortal and will always have a place as long as there is a canvas to paint on. While Seattle spends millions each year to clean it up, Hansen mentioned the city is actually giving artists a fresh start on their art.

“People should think about: through difficulty comes strength. If you try to push something down like graffiti, which you’re never going to be able to stop graffiti; it’s an element of society that’s been here since the ancient years of mankind,” Hansen said. “If you try to stop it, they’ll just try to figure out a way to get around. Graffiti has no rules, whereas someone who’s trying to paint over graffiti has rules. They have a paycheck.

“We spend over $4 million a year in the city just to try to paint it out, get rid of it, but you’re creating a blank canvas, they’re just going to put another thing up there, they’re actually going to look for a more permanent way to put their name up, I’ve done really nice murals and had people tag graffiti on it,” Hansen continued. “And I have to just kind of say, well, that’s the byproduct of city life.”

While many, including host Ursula Reutin, view graffiti as an “eyesore,” Hansen believes that if there were more city-sanctioned locations for artists to showcase their work, there would be fewer “scribbles” throughout the city as a result.

“When I’m painting the murals, part of my motivation is to, and part of why I’m here too, is to try to change society’s outlook on graffiti and to help them understand that graffiti, the way we see it now, ultimately, is Americana. Can you think of any other art form that was born here?” Hansen said. “I’m not saying just stop painting over graffiti, but the fact that there is just a handful of graffiti removal companies getting paid over $4 million a year just to create blank canvases for the graffiti artists to come right back and do what they do, to me, that’s a waste of taxpayers’ money in a way.

“If there were more places across the city, like what we’re doing in West Seattle, then there definitely would be less of the unwanted looking graffiti,” Hansen continued. “There would be more of like, colorful, maybe even pretty pictures being painted, that sort of thing. And we need more of these walls in order to do that.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.