Dori: Lake City putting up with serial sidewalk poopers

There was an interesting court decision from the most liberal, the most overturned court in the land, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. They ruled on Wednesday that cities cannot prosecute people for sleeping on the street if they have nowhere else to go.

In Seattle, of course, people can sleep in their cars and stay parked for months at a time. The problem with this court ruling is, most of the people on the street refuse the services offered by the cops. Abusing heroin and sleeping on the street is the lifestyle they are choosing.

I’ve seen the steady decline of Lake City ever since they put in a big food bank. I’ve encouraged my daughters and the girls I coached in basketball to volunteer at that food bank to fulfill their community service hours for school. I do believe we should all be philanthropic. The problem is, the food bank has become an attractant for people who refuse all services. I’ve seen people shoot up heroin in the parking lot of a large variety store in the neighborhood.

RELATED: Magnolia businesses putting up with needles, feces, break-ins due to neighborhood homeless encampment

KOMO 4 and Q13 talked to the owner of the Lake City Grocery Outlet, who has witnessed homeless people defecating on the sidewalk outside his property. There is a large public bathroom one block away from the store. Yet people choose to poop on the sidewalk rather than walking a block. Human waste is everywhere in this neighborhood.

Mike Sandberg, the Lake City Grocery Outlet owner, told me in an interview that the group of homeless people who refuse services has “taken up residence” in the flowerbeds along the sidewalk.

“They have grocery carts piled with stuff, they pile garbage all over, they defecate on the sidewalks … the police haven’t really been able to do much, so it’s been frustrating,” he said.

Sandberg has compassion for people who really are just down on their luck, but he pointed out that the people in this group have chosen their situation.

“They have social workers that call on them on a regular basis offering them help that they always refuse,” he said. “It’s not a housing situation … they don’t want the responsibility of stopping drinking, drugging, and having to work — they embrace the lifestyle that they have, and they’ve so much as told me that.”

The group has grown from just a couple of people to “as many as 15 people who stop by and party there,” he said. Three or four people regularly sleep in the planter.

Sandberg has sent several emails to the Seattle City Council and the mayor, but has received very little in response — and certainly no action.

Many of Sandberg’s customers have told him that the neighborhood situation has them too afraid to shop at his store anymore.

“It definitely has impacted my business; we’ve had a number of customers tell us that they love shopping at the store, but they can’t come back, that they don’t feel safe bringing their children, that they don’t feel safe parking their cars,” he said. “And the old rule of thumb in the business is if one person tells you something, then there are 10 others talking with their feet.”

As I said, it all started going downhill when they put in a food bank. What do you do? You want to help people, you want to feed the hungry. Yet for these poor business owners, crime in the neighborhood has skyrocketed. There is a level of belligerence among the addicts. The people don’t want services; they want food, and they want to be left alone to poop on the sidewalk. Meanwhile, you have all these business owners who are the economic engine of our city, and no one is looking out for them. Nobody. The city council sure isn’t and the mayor sure isn’t. They have contempt for the businesses because they’re capitalists.

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