Nudity in Seattle parks and homeless count controversy

[00:00:00] .

[00:00:01] Hello and welcome to the latest Mid-May edition of Seattle Nice.

[00:00:14] I'm your moderator, David Hyde with reporter and editor of Publicola, Erica C. Barnett,

[00:00:20] who is on vacation in an undisclosed location.

[00:00:22] Always, always undisclosed, but I am on vacation.

[00:00:26] But not vacation enough to not talk to you, the listener of Seattle Nice.

[00:00:31] Also with us, as always, political consultant Sandeep Kaushik.

[00:00:35] Yeah, who is on permanent vacation?

[00:00:38] There you go. Permanent mental vacation.

[00:00:40] Today's show action packed in a minute.

[00:00:43] We're going to be talking about nudity and sex in parks.

[00:00:46] But first, the latest one night King County point in time count.

[00:00:52] More than 16000 people experiencing homelessness, a 28 percent increase over

[00:00:57] 2022. Erica, that trend is not great.

[00:01:02] Right. What's your reaction to this latest point in time count?

[00:01:06] I mean, it's not a great trend, but I would also say it's based on two years

[00:01:10] of doing the point in time count this particular way using a technique called

[00:01:15] respondent driven sampling that I think we might have talked about before

[00:01:18] on this podcast.

[00:01:20] I don't know. They fly out of my brain immediately as soon as we record

[00:01:23] them, unfortunately. But but but so it's not like

[00:01:27] in the past when people actually went out and counted as many people as they were

[00:01:31] able to observe and sort of estimated how many people were in tents and cars

[00:01:36] and various forms of non-shelter unsheltered people.

[00:01:40] This time it's based on this statistical sampling technique that I won't bore

[00:01:44] anybody by going into. But, you know, we've got two years of data is kind

[00:01:48] of the high level point I'm making. So, you know, it's a it's a bad trend,

[00:01:52] but it's also kind of hard to call it a trend because you can't really make

[00:01:55] trend lines over time with just two years worth of data.

[00:01:58] But but the number did go up and the percentage of folks who are sheltered

[00:02:02] went down. So that is not encouraging.

[00:02:04] So you never accused of being actually you probably were accused of being

[00:02:07] trendy back in the day, but not recently, probably.

[00:02:11] But what do you think about this trend or not trend, which is quite serious?

[00:02:15] Well, it's a bad trend.

[00:02:17] Obviously, I mean, the count is up 28 percent over two years.

[00:02:21] That's a big increase.

[00:02:22] I mean, I think Erica's right.

[00:02:24] There's some there's some methodological changes that they've made over the years

[00:02:29] at various points in there.

[00:02:30] So it's hard to make a really good kind of apples to apples comparison here.

[00:02:35] But it's also pretty unlikely that it may not be up 28 percent,

[00:02:41] but it's pretty unlikely that homelessness is not up significantly

[00:02:45] given the numbers that they're producing, including the number of people

[00:02:48] who are actually completely unsheltered.

[00:02:51] Right. That number went up a lot, too, in the count.

[00:02:54] So it's it's bad.

[00:02:56] Right. It's a bad number.

[00:02:57] And particularly after we've had these big high profile efforts

[00:03:03] over the last few years, partnership for zero and the creation

[00:03:07] of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and all of this sort

[00:03:10] of sherman drang about all this stuff.

[00:03:12] And if anything, it looks like we've lost ground.

[00:03:15] Do you feel the same way, Erica?

[00:03:16] Or is the methodology here make it just hard to draw conclusions?

[00:03:21] Let's just say that the issue is not the methodology, that it is in fact getting

[00:03:26] worse. I don't think that pointing to something like partnership for zero,

[00:03:30] which was an effort to get a few hundred homeless people off the streets

[00:03:34] of downtown, you know, is really going to be the reason that we're seeing

[00:03:39] thousands more people showing up in the count this year.

[00:03:42] I mean, and I and I also would say,

[00:03:44] you know, we haven't really done anything about homelessness that is different

[00:03:49] than what we've done in the past.

[00:03:50] Over the last couple of years, we have definitely rearranged these

[00:03:54] sort of service provision landscape, but we're not spending any more money.

[00:03:59] You know, and in fact, I mean, the total amount has gone up,

[00:04:02] but we're not spending enough, I guess I should say, to dramatically increase

[00:04:06] the service provision.

[00:04:07] You know, we're giving people sort of reasonable cost of living adjustments

[00:04:11] and inflationary increases in cost.

[00:04:13] But, you know, man, I mean, we're looking at the budget next year

[00:04:16] for the city of Seattle, which is one of the main funders of the KCRAJ.

[00:04:20] And Bruce Harrell has proposed cutting our spending on homelessness

[00:04:24] and actually cutting hundreds of shelter beds.

[00:04:27] And so I don't think we can very easily say, oh,

[00:04:30] we've done so much on homelessness and it's getting worse.

[00:04:32] Let's do something different.

[00:04:34] Well, I think right.

[00:04:35] If rearranging anything, it's the deck chairs on the Titanic.

[00:04:38] I mean, we can talk about whether there was, you know, resources put behind

[00:04:43] some of these new initiatives that have happened over the last couple of years.

[00:04:46] But I think it's hard to deny that right now

[00:04:49] our homelessness response system is just not

[00:04:53] not in a great place.

[00:04:54] Right. King County, RHA.

[00:04:55] We've sort of talked about the they're in the midst of this

[00:04:59] sort of never ending.

[00:05:00] Well, presumably it will end soon.

[00:05:02] CEO search.

[00:05:03] But the organization has been without a CEO for more than a year.

[00:05:08] It seems kind of rudderless.

[00:05:09] There have been all these internal problems that that

[00:05:13] there's some efforts to try to fix.

[00:05:15] So not beyond the lack of resources, the sort of lack of coordination

[00:05:21] and and and sort of internal cohesion and competence

[00:05:25] also seems to be at this point kind of well, I want to say,

[00:05:29] I mean, when you talk about internal coordination,

[00:05:31] you know, one thing that's happened and, you know, frankly, just to be clear,

[00:05:34] I think the problem is resources.

[00:05:35] I think that, you know, saying, oh, you know, the organizational structure

[00:05:38] is bad, therefore homelessness is getting worse is a is a pretty big stretch.

[00:05:42] But it doesn't help.

[00:05:44] And one of the things that has happened that I've reported on a bunch

[00:05:46] is that, you know, the city of Seattle is sort of slowly clawing back

[00:05:50] little pieces of the homelessness authority for itself and saying,

[00:05:54] you know what, actually, we didn't really mean to give you,

[00:05:57] you know, oversight over outreach to people experiencing homelessness

[00:06:01] and, oh, we're going to take back prevention dollars, you know,

[00:06:04] and there's just there's there's tentacles of the city

[00:06:07] that are going into the KCRAJ that I think, you know, are part of,

[00:06:11] you know, of continuing to undermine it.

[00:06:14] And I totally understand why that's happening.

[00:06:16] I mean, the the organization has had a lot of kind of disastrous

[00:06:20] decisions made over the last couple of years.

[00:06:23] And it's kind of a place where there's a culture of chaos internally.

[00:06:27] And I think all that's true.

[00:06:29] But I also think it was perhaps a lot.

[00:06:33] I mean, I don't I think it's premature for me to say what I was about to say,

[00:06:36] which is that it was perhaps a doomed experiment because still exists.

[00:06:39] It's still trying.

[00:06:39] But, you know, I'm not sure moving everything into one organization

[00:06:44] and instead of another was really the answer.

[00:06:48] And this, quote unquote, regional approach to homelessness

[00:06:50] has not turned out to be very regional.

[00:06:52] Yeah. And I don't disagree with what Eric, what you just said,

[00:06:56] that there's a huge mismatch between the scale of the problem

[00:06:59] and the level of resources we have available to it.

[00:07:02] So obviously, there is a resource issue here.

[00:07:06] And when you hear these sort of people sometimes sort of say,

[00:07:09] oh, we're spending 100 million and there are 10,000 homeless people.

[00:07:12] When I do the math, that means we're spending one hundred

[00:07:15] thousand dollars a person.

[00:07:16] And, you know, they do this sort of, well, just straight up

[00:07:19] wrong kind of kind of math. Right.

[00:07:21] I mean, this homelessness is a dynamic system.

[00:07:23] People are falling into homelessness and sometimes exiting homelessness.

[00:07:27] You know, as we've done the number,

[00:07:29] the other kinds of numbers were seen rather than the one point count.

[00:07:32] Probably a more accurate measure is over any given year. Right.

[00:07:36] There are probably more than 50,000 people who at some point

[00:07:39] during that year in King County are homeless.

[00:07:42] And that's probably a more accurate picture

[00:07:46] of the kind of scale and scope of the problem. Right.

[00:07:49] You know, at any given moment, maybe there's only 10,000 people.

[00:07:53] But over time, people are kind of either entering or exiting.

[00:07:58] And the quest then in our response system

[00:08:01] is to try to get to what they call net zero. Right.

[00:08:04] That you're exiting more people from homelessness

[00:08:07] in any given month or period than your than are falling into homelessness.

[00:08:11] And we're clearly not there.

[00:08:12] In fact, we seem to be losing ground.

[00:08:14] Well, as we are, as we talked about recently, I mean, every time

[00:08:17] the rents go up in an area by a hundred dollars, you know, it's

[00:08:21] and I'm blanking on the exact percentage.

[00:08:24] Fifteen, fifteen percent increase in homelessness.

[00:08:26] I mean, so, you know, I've sort of looking at this,

[00:08:30] this, you know, angry press release from Reagan done Republican

[00:08:33] on the King County Council saying we need to stop sinking money

[00:08:36] into this housing first for giving everybody housing.

[00:08:38] And it's terrible to give them housing before they're,

[00:08:40] you know, cured of their addictions and cured of their mental illness

[00:08:43] and et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, well, I mean, it's just

[00:08:46] you can't even if you say, well, let's just put people in shelter

[00:08:49] until we think they deserve housing.

[00:08:50] There's more coming in the door, you know, or out the door

[00:08:53] into homelessness every single day as rents go up, you know,

[00:08:57] and as economic factors that have caused people to be homeless,

[00:09:00] to, you know, become more addicted and more problematic

[00:09:03] in their addiction and mental health problems.

[00:09:05] So it's just it's so unrealistic to sort of say,

[00:09:09] let's stop this approach and let's find some other

[00:09:12] magical approach that's going to work better

[00:09:14] because what we need is resources.

[00:09:16] That's my soapbox.

[00:09:17] I'll just end by saying I don't think we have our shit together.

[00:09:22] Agreed.

[00:09:24] That's the takeaway.

[00:09:25] Another instance of sad agreement here on Seattle Night.

[00:09:27] Let's go to topic two, a story about that plan that was reported earlier.

[00:09:33] I think we talked about it, about a plan to build a kids playground

[00:09:36] near a nude beach at Denny Blaine Park.

[00:09:38] That plan is dead, right?

[00:09:41] But KUW has subsequently done some reporting on the donor

[00:09:44] who was backing that plan and supporting it.

[00:09:47] A businessman named Stuart Sloan, who also owns University Village,

[00:09:51] reportedly frustrated with the naked sunbathers

[00:09:53] at Denny Blaine Park.

[00:09:55] The plot sickens Sandeep Kaushik.

[00:09:57] Yeah, well, I think it was actually, as I understand it from the story

[00:10:01] in KUW's story, there was also a story in The Stranger about it.

[00:10:05] The complaint from not just Sloan, but other neighbors is that they're also

[00:10:09] allegedly people, you know, having sex in the park and stuff like that.

[00:10:13] So and other sort of, you know, sort of out of bound

[00:10:17] behaviors that are going on that were causing them to,

[00:10:20] you know, get frustrated and upset.

[00:10:22] And I guess in Sloan's case, to reach out to the mayor directly

[00:10:28] and ask them to do something.

[00:10:30] And apparently, according to the KUW story, you know, that

[00:10:33] that's what precipitated the city's abortive effort

[00:10:38] to install a playground in that park and presumably

[00:10:42] then create a a rationale for saying you can't have all the nudity.

[00:10:48] Right. I mean, and just by way of context for our listeners,

[00:10:52] maybe haven't been following the story.

[00:10:53] Obviously, this is a park that particularly catered to the LGBTQ community.

[00:10:57] And it was a park where folks from that community, you know,

[00:11:00] who wanted to go and hang out nude were able to do so. Right.

[00:11:03] So so it very quickly got caught up into the pushback, right.

[00:11:07] And from progressive and gay and lesbian circles saying,

[00:11:12] hey, this is the tack on our community to take away our park.

[00:11:15] And the city fairly quickly backed down on it.

[00:11:20] But, you know, not before they made some pretty extensive plans,

[00:11:22] it looks like, to to make this change.

[00:11:25] Conspiracy theories aren't good.

[00:11:28] But what's the phrase like sometimes just because you're paranoid

[00:11:30] doesn't mean somebody's not out to get it.

[00:11:32] It's going to be some donors not calling the mayor. Right.

[00:11:35] Yeah. Yeah. In this case, there really was kind of that is exactly.

[00:11:39] You know, people thought this is why they're building this park.

[00:11:42] Yes. Now we've got the smoking gun

[00:11:44] suggesting that that indeed was the case. Right.

[00:11:46] Yeah. Well, you know, thank God for Ashley Heruko at KUOW

[00:11:49] reporting this out and not just kind of dropping it because, yeah,

[00:11:53] I think this is I think this is slimy as fuck for a donor

[00:11:56] to be able to text the mayor and say, I'm upset.

[00:12:00] You know, my I can't remember how much his property and house is worth.

[00:12:04] But, you know, my very expensive home is next to

[00:12:09] who could have known a historic nude beach

[00:12:11] and who could have possibly guessed that nudity would happen

[00:12:16] at this historic nude beach and there be gay people, you know,

[00:12:19] offending his sensibilities.

[00:12:20] I mean, I don't know what his sensibilities are, so I don't want to

[00:12:23] or impugn his character.

[00:12:25] But man, I mean, just the whole way the story went down seems pretty slimy.

[00:12:29] You know, frankly, weaponizing the sort of the children

[00:12:33] to crack down on, you know, in this case, a nude beach.

[00:12:36] But, you know, a lot of times it's homeless shelters or, you know,

[00:12:39] other other things that people just don't want next to their properties

[00:12:43] that they own is just, you know, I think it's pretty it's pretty gross.

[00:12:48] Well, so here, I guess a couple of thoughts for me on this.

[00:12:51] I mean, one, look, every mayor knows people has friends like

[00:12:56] and everybody who like knows the mayor and has their cell phone number

[00:12:59] when they see a problem is going to shoot a text to the mayor,

[00:13:01] like, you know, because they know.

[00:13:03] Oh, I'm sorry.

[00:13:04] I'm talking about the whole thing where it was going to happen,

[00:13:07] where there was going to be a donation and they were going to shut down

[00:13:10] this nude beach because somebody had access to the mayor.

[00:13:12] Right. Well, I'm not talking about having access.

[00:13:15] I'm talking about using that access and the mayor letting you use that access.

[00:13:18] Well, I think I am a little surprised that the city.

[00:13:23] Well, maybe I'm not that surprised, but that they

[00:13:26] I would think they would have been a little more politically astute

[00:13:30] or savvy to realize that they were walking into a buzzsaw

[00:13:33] with something like this.

[00:13:34] And maybe there would have been a better way to handle

[00:13:37] what sounds like potentially some legitimate complaints,

[00:13:39] like if people are getting blow jobs or whatever, like,

[00:13:42] you don't want to, like, look out your window and watch people

[00:13:44] having sex in the park next door.

[00:13:46] I think that's a I think there could have been a lot of other ways

[00:13:48] you might handle that problem without moving to either,

[00:13:53] you know, clearly curtail or shut down the park entirely.

[00:13:57] Right. Or the or the nudity at the park.

[00:13:59] OK, so it's it's a nude beach.

[00:14:02] And like that's that is that is what it is. Right.

[00:14:05] So that's well known.

[00:14:06] You're talking about blow jobs happening out in the open

[00:14:08] and all this stuff that I think you're you, Sunday, are personally making that up.

[00:14:13] I don't think you've ever like actually witnessed that.

[00:14:15] I think you're just trying to be sensationalistic.

[00:14:17] That is what the story implies, Erica, for sure.

[00:14:20] Ashley's story. She she doesn't actually.

[00:14:22] But that's fine. I mean, I don't know what her reporting is.

[00:14:24] She doesn't quote neighbors.

[00:14:25] She has a anonymous neighbors mentioned urination and and sex.

[00:14:31] So but let me let me finish my point.

[00:14:34] I mean, this this reminds me very much when I moved here,

[00:14:37] you know, and before that as well, there was just this outrage

[00:14:41] about cruising in Volunteer Park.

[00:14:42] And like and I don't I don't know what all was done to try to crack down

[00:14:47] on, you know, this horrible phenomenon of gay men having sex with each other

[00:14:52] consensually in in a park.

[00:14:54] But I remember there is a there is a similar fucking moral outrage.

[00:14:58] And, you know, and I got to say, there are of all the things that

[00:15:03] bother me personally in the world like that is that I mean,

[00:15:07] it's not even on my list.

[00:15:08] I'm not even going to say it's far down my list.

[00:15:10] I don't care. I do not care.

[00:15:12] And, you know, and I'm not part of that community.

[00:15:15] And like, I'm not, you know, I'm not the demographic

[00:15:18] that's going to be cruising in a park.

[00:15:19] But, you know, if that is something that people do or did,

[00:15:22] you know, in Volunteer Park, I didn't care.

[00:15:24] And I just think these like these prissy kind of,

[00:15:27] you know, periodic, you know, moral panics about about sex

[00:15:33] and about, you know, nudity and whatever it may be.

[00:15:37] Just, you know, Seattle just loves to have them.

[00:15:40] And I think that I think that it's really no different,

[00:15:43] you know, except that, you know, I don't know all the details of Denny Blaine.

[00:15:47] Like I said, I'm not part of this community.

[00:15:49] But yeah, I mean, it just seemed it seemed like a shady thing in the first place.

[00:15:53] And I cannot imagine caring that much.

[00:15:56] Like, get a problem.

[00:15:57] I have no idea how much of that activity is going on.

[00:16:00] Like, I'm just going off with the story reported that the neighbors

[00:16:03] complained to us if some of that kind of shit was going on.

[00:16:06] I could see why people might not love it as as as sort of

[00:16:10] free and easy as you are, Erica.

[00:16:14] You know, you moved in next to the nude beach, man.

[00:16:17] Like, it seems like that.

[00:16:18] Yesterday, those sorts of issues are, you know,

[00:16:22] I think they should have put a gay naked park ranger in the park

[00:16:26] for a while to like dissuade bad behavior, right?

[00:16:29] As opposed to a playground, right?

[00:16:30] That might have been a better way to handle the problem, right?

[00:16:33] If there if there was such a problem.

[00:16:35] And I guess I'm saying I don't I don't I will tell you this.

[00:16:38] I will give you an anecdote like not last summer, summer before last.

[00:16:42] I was leaving my office building and I often go out the back way,

[00:16:45] which puts you in the alley in my office in Pioneer Square.

[00:16:48] I walk out. It's in the middle of the day one day to go somewhere.

[00:16:51] And right by the dumpsters there, there's a dude with a basically

[00:16:57] like with a crack pipe and a woman on her knees by the dumpster,

[00:17:01] given the dude a blow job and.

[00:17:04] Yeah, you know, I mean, whatever, like I walk by,

[00:17:07] you know, walked away, but it's like a sordid sex for drug, you know,

[00:17:12] like, I don't think this.

[00:17:13] I don't really want to see that.

[00:17:14] Are you really comparing Denny Blaine?

[00:17:17] Well, I calling it a sordid,

[00:17:20] sordid and saying it's the same as a guy getting a blow job

[00:17:23] while holding a crack pipe in an alley.

[00:17:25] Are you really saying that?

[00:17:27] Are you saying I'm saying I'm saying I guess I don't want to see.

[00:17:34] You don't have to go to lots of public sexual activity.

[00:17:37] Right. But the neighbors presumably have to look out their windows sometimes.

[00:17:41] I mean, it's not that crazy to be like,

[00:17:43] I don't care if they're naked people in the park.

[00:17:45] I just don't want them to.

[00:17:46] Well, first of all, I mean, you know, I do know this is historically a lesbian

[00:17:49] beach. You know, I think none of us are especially qualified.

[00:17:53] It's a little embarrassing to be talking about this among three people

[00:17:56] who are not, you know, the people who go there.

[00:17:59] And so so I just I just but I find your speculation kind of humorous.

[00:18:04] I mean, like, yeah, again, of all the like, get a real problem,

[00:18:08] like have a problem in the world, you know, before you start getting all

[00:18:12] like, you know, morally outraged and pursuant about some naked people

[00:18:18] in a fucking beach. I just I just I don't know, man.

[00:18:20] There are there are real problems in the world.

[00:18:23] Next week's debate, should we legalize sex in public?

[00:18:26] Oh, my God. Yeah.

[00:18:28] You know, listeners write and tell us how much public sex is happening

[00:18:32] at 10 o'clock playing nude beach.

[00:18:34] We want to know if because we are not in the know and we're embarrassed

[00:18:37] to say so. That's it for another edition of Seattle Nice.

[00:18:40] I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kashyak, Eric Casiparnett

[00:18:43] and our editor is Quinn Waller.

[00:18:46] And that's it. Thanks so much for listening.