Seattleites, businesses illegally dumping trash at homeless camps

The city spends about $200,000 a year of taxpayer money to pick up garbage at unsanctioned encampments, but it looks like a lot of that garbage is being generated by people who aren’t even homeless.

According to KIRO 7, businesses and individuals are illegally dumping their garbage at encampments across the city. It’s up 193 percent over the last few years.

For KIRO Radio’s John Curley, the proliferation of illegal dumping is partially a result of the trash that’s already there.

“Hey if you can leave garbage, I’m going to leave some garbage, too,” he said.

“It’s the broken window theory,” he said. “A psychologist from 1969 took a car and left it in the streets in New York City. And then he took a car and put it in Palo Alto, California. Within 10 minutes, the one in New York was completely destroyed. The Palo Alto one sat there for a week.”

“So then he takes a sledgehammer to the car in Palo Alto, and within 20 minutes, the car is torn to pieces. A little bit of garbage, a little bit of graffiti leads to more problems.”

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City workers received multiple reports from people living in the encampments that big trucks featuring contractor stickers have been coming at night and leaving raw materials behind. Last year there were 17,500 reports of illegal dumping, more than doubling the 6,000 four years ago.

“It’s human nature. Is it criminal? Yeah,” Curley said. “Hey it looks like the homeless people can leave all their crap out, I’m going to leave my crap out. I mean I don’t even think twice about public urination anymore,” joked Curley.

Are homeless camps being used as scapegoats?

But KIRO Radio’s Tom Tangney thinks people are just using the homeless encampments and the people living there as scapegoats for their own immoral and illegal dumping.

“They’re using the bad rep of the homeless as cover for them. It’s bad enough that the homeless have this bad reputation as criminals,” Tom said. “And now we’re having supposedly law-abiding types dumping on them, saying, ‘Oh look at the homeless, they’re so terrible.”

The city is considering installing cameras at the encampments in an attempt to curb the increase in citizens and businesses illegally dumping their trash on the grounds. For Curley, though, merely having these sites in the first place is sending a message that it’s OK to leave garbage behind.

“If we got the homeless out of there,” he said. “And we actually enforce the laws on the book, and you cleaned up the junk left behind by the homeless, whether it be needles or feces or broken garbage cans, do you think the contractor would come along and just throw his garbage on the road?”

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