By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
What’s the difference between Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ new $145 million
property tax levy for low-income housing, and the Tent City III homeless
encampment soon to set up at St. Therese Parish?
Answer: Tent City has accountability and adult supervision.
A few hours after a unanimous Seattle City Council vote to put Nickels’
latest big-ticket levy on the ballot, Tent City folk met with Madrona
residents to iron out details on their upcoming two-month stay.
One neighbor asked: What happens if alcohol or drug abusers are found in
the camp?
“The security person escorts them to the nearest bus stop, and puts them
on the bus. The objective is to get them out of the neighborhood,” said
Don Smith, a Tent City III resident.
In line with the goal of least neighborhood impact, Tent City III will
enforce a “quiet time” from 9:30 p.m. to 8 a.m. Television is permitted,
with the volume turned down, until 10:30 p.m. Smith gets up at 4 a.m. to
go to work.
Accountability includes two people on security at all times, phone numbers
for neighbors to call, but most of all an unspoken condition: If promises
are not kept, Tent City III won’t be welcomed back.
The neighborhood’s last Tent City III experience, in 2001, was
positive.It’s good to hear some group listen and show sensitivity to its
impact on a neighborhood. Tent City III and its parent, SHARE/WHEEL, ought
to go down and give lessons at City Hall.
In rubber-tamping Nickels’ latest levy, the City Council did show concern
for low-income folk. But it demonstrated a striking insensitivity toward a
middle class coping with a deep recession.
The $145 million levy replaces an $86 million housing levy passed in a
more prosperous 2002.
The Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce urged restraint, suggesting that
the levy be renewed for $86 million. Councilwoman Jan Drago suggested a
$120 million levy, but nobody would second her motion.
Why not? Because city government is never disposed to ask voters for one
dollar when two will do.
“Personally, I would have preferred an even higher number,” said Seattle
City Council President Richard Conlin.
The 2002 levy cost about $49 a year for the owner of a house valued at
$460,000. The new model will up that to $79, which Conlin pooh-poohed as
“not a significant amount.”
He overlooks some pretty significant Nickels and dimes.
The record $365 million, nine-year “Bridging the Gap” levy, passed in
2006, upped taxes on a typical home by $155 a year. The mayor and council
slapped a new tax on “the act or privilege of parking a motor vehicle in a
commercial parking lot within the city.”
The gold-plated street levy was followed in 2008 by the $75 million Pike
Place Market levy and the $145 million Parks Department levy. Total costs
to that average homeowner: about $130 a year.
The Sound Transit II expansion of light rail jacked up the sales tax to
9.5 percent, and will cost the average household $173 a year. Light rail
is wonderful, but we are paying through the nose for it.
“Seattle residents are currently paying to support 14 county and municipal
bonds and special levies, totaling roughly $1.5 billion,” the Washington
Policy Center reported in a study last year.
How are taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars being spent?
Just look at the trashing of Belltown, or the City Council’s votes to put
parking tax dollars into the Mercer Street rebuild, a piece of corporate
welfare with Paul Allen as chief beneficiary. Why is Nick Licata the only
councilmember to ask critical questions?
On a more pleasant note …
Welcome back to Madrona, Tent City III. The last stay brings back warm
memories. Mickie made me bake a pie to take to a potluck with Tent City
III residents. The social company turned out to be working poor people,
who’d had a leg knocked out from under their precarious finances.
Walking the family hound past Tent City at night was pleasant rather than
fearful, especially when a deep voice would greet me with the words,
“Mister, that’s a big poodle.”
Seattle is a community with a sense of community. So is Vancouver, B.C.,
making strides in housing its homeless under the dynamic newly elected
Mayor Gregor Robertson.
St. Therese is a parish committed to social justice. On cold nights, the
big poodle and I are accustomed to seeing a van from St. James Cathedral
drive up and let off homeless men who sleep in the school gym.
During last week’s Madrona meeting, parish administrator Fr. Stephen Okumu
spoke movingly of his brief homeless stint while a graduate student at
Berkeley in the 1990’s … and of trying to house refugees from tribal
violence at a cathedral in his native Kenya.
Still, you can be concerned about both the homeless and a burdened middle
class.
“I wonder when Seattle voters will say no,” Drago remarked as she and
colleagues put Nickels’ latest levy on the ballot.
Would hate to see those needing a roof over their heads pay the price when
voters finally blow their tops.
Filed under: Anti-poverty, Homelessness, Seattle, tent city, tent city 3
