As Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell continues to shuffle homeless addicts from one neighborhood to the next to mask the depth of the crisis, one area is under siege. In Belltown, workers and residents are being assaulted, forced to clean up human waste, and some businesses now keep their doors locked during business hours—for safety.
Walk down Blanchard Street between Second and Third Avenues at any time of day, and you’ll see the decay firsthand: open-air drug deals, addicts smoking fentanyl, and mentally ill homeless people wandering naked or sexually harassing women. Trash lines the sidewalks. The once-popular fenced-in dog park is now virtually unusable. At the nearby bus stop on Third Avenue, commuters cling to their belongings, heads on swivels, waiting for a bus to get them out of there.
But for the people who live and work in Belltown, there is no easy escape. They’re desperate for the city to intervene. Instead, officials have let the neighborhood spiral into the dangerous mess it has become.
“It can be very stressful… just turned the corner every day and wondering what’s going to be outside your business today, whether it’s going to be safe, whether you’re going to get pepper sprayed, whether you’re going to have to clean up human feces or get piles of garbage, fentanyl leftovers, all kinds of garbage that’s left behind,” the manager of a business on 3rd and Blanchard explained exclusively to “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH. (Note: I am a customer.)
Homeless addicts knock out, pepper-spray random passers-by
The business manager asked for anonymity out of fear that she would be targeted. She also lives on the block, so she experiences the harassment, drug use, and criminal behavior daily…