Seattle businesses plead for help with panhandlers
Oct 8, 2012, 5:17 AM | Updated: 6:27 am
Some downtown Seattle business owners complain panhandling and drug dealing have gotten out of hand. (File photo courtesy Matt Longmire/Sign of Hope)
(File photo courtesy Matt Longmire/Sign of Hope)
Business leaders in downtown Seattle say it’s time to do something about out-of-control panhandling and drug dealing on city streets.
They’ve sent a strongly-worded letter to the mayor and the city council that says it’s reached a “tipping point.”
Argosy Cruises president Kevin Clark tells KING 5 tourism surveys have found many Seattle visitors are beginning to sour on the city.
“They’re not coming back to Seattle. It just didn’t feel safe.”
Clark is one of several business owners who have taken photos of panhandlers along the waterfront and downtown and sent them to city officials to document the problem.
“There’s someone who’s been camped out in a tree well for the last six to eight weeks,” Clark says of one panhandler who camped in front of Argosy, with two pitbulls, one of them pregnant.
The effort to alert the mayor and the city council to the problem with panhandlers was coordinated by the Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn sent the group a letter Thursday night saying, “On some issues, such as how we deal with low level street disorder, there is not yet consensus in the community about what is the best approach.”
