Tag Archives: homelessness

Washington, D.C., failed city

This is the third in our series of posts on failed cities — all “blue” cities run by Democrats. See “San Francisco, failed city” and “Seattle, failed city“.

Steven Edginton writes for The (UK) Telegraph, May 10, 2023:

When thinking of Washington DC, grand monuments and museums might come to mind, however, in recent years, America’s capital has become more renowned for its growing homeless population and rising crime.

“Crime here has exploded, people do not feel safe,” Isaac Smith, an Emergency Medical Technician in DC, told The Telegraph for a documentary film about the capital.

“I have a bullet hole through my living room,” Mr Smith continued.

“I hear gunshots frequently and I live right next to an elementary school. There’s a bullet hole in one of the [school’s] windows.”

Violent crime in DC has risen by 10 per cent since 2022, which includes a 15 per cent increase in homicides.

Mr Smith blames the Democrats, who have dominated the city’s local politics for decades, for the rise in violence….

Washington DC has also experienced a 12 per cent increase in homelessness in the last year.

Homeless encampments have appeared across the city, including at some of DC’s most famous landmarks such as Union Station and near the Washington Monument.

The rise in homelessness and crime has led some to leave the city.

Boris Ryvkin, a former resident of DC and a Republican advisor, says he moved due to poor local government services.

“I left DC because of taxes, crime, terrible public services and just terrible government,” Mr Ryvkin told this newspaper.

“The city council and the mayor have completely failed and I joined the exodus of hundreds of thousands of people literally just across the river to Virginia and Maryland,” he continued….

“What’s happening in Washington DC and in other American cities in terms of homelessness is basically the same thing that’s happened in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Vancouver, other progressive West Coast cities,” Michael Shellenberger, an independent journalist who has written about San Francisco’s recent drug epidemic, told The Telegraph.

He continued: “You have very progressive members of the city councils, of the governing bodies of those cities, that have decided that certain laws should not be enforced against people deemed to be victims.”

“So you’ve seen city council members in Washington DC have demanded that people be allowed to camp illegally on the sidewalks, [and] not be required to come inside to shelters.”

“That’s even though we know that you’re three times more likely to die as a homeless person if you’re living outside, unsheltered, than if you’re inside.”

“So when you see this increase of tents around places like the train station, around subway stops, it’s almost always because there’s some political momentum behind not enforcing basic laws.”

~E

Seattle, failed city

I recently returned from a trip to Seattle – my first since 2019 due to their strict Wuhan virus restrictions implemented in 2020.

What I saw was just so depressing. A demorat-run city that is in ruins. Recent pictures I had seen on social media of the homelessness that runs rampant in Seattle:

I saw homeless camps along the freeway that I had never seen before when I previously lived there for decades.

Driving along the I-5 through Seattle was just ugly. So much “tagging” (graffiti) on the concrete walls and traffic signs. A friend told me that much of the tagging has been cleaned up since the 2020 riots. He also told me that the Seattle Police to this day will not stop anyone from tagging. An example of what the tagging looked like in 2020. It’s better today yet was still all along the I-5 corridor.

Along with the endless homelessness situation, crime, tagging and fentanyl crisis in demorat-run Seattle, residents in a certain zip code must now pick up their mail due to vandalism and theft.

From MyNorthwest.com:

“Some south Seattle residents are claiming a significant ‘mail fail’ is occurring as the United States Postal Service (USPS) has halted mail delivery due to a rise in recent vandalism and theft.

A sign at a nearby U.S. Postal Service office in Columbia City is telling residents in the “98118” zip code to pick up their mail in person at an annex office, located at 5920 Martin Luther King Jr Way South. The zip code covers around 49,000 people — but it’s unclear how many of them are not getting their mail delivered.

A visit to that annex office Thursday afternoon revealed a line of more than a dozen people waiting for their mail. A single employee was seen helping them.

One woman named Jenny told KIRO Newsradio that she had no official communication with USPS, but that her local postal carrier told her, “this was going to take a long while to fix and we had to come [to the annex office] to get our mail.”

Seward Park resident Barbara Myers said her postal carrier told her the issue was caused by a recent theft. “They haven’t been delivering mail for four days because a master key that operates all the boxes in Seward Park has been stolen,” Myers said.

When questioned about any thefts of mailbox master keys in that area, USPS Inspection Service spokesperson John Wiegand said there are active investigations, but declined to provide details.

Property crime has been on the rise in the Seattle area, in the Northwest, and kind of across the country — and mail theft is unfortunately one of those areas that have been targeted significantly with that uptick in crime,” Wiegand said.”

Read the whole story here.

Ain’t demorat-run Seattle grand!

DCG