Maybe the issue lies with America not Seattle? A harsh unforgiving society coupled with a lack of a social safety net. Throw in easy access to drugs and things go to hell quickly.

These problems don't exist in NEARLY the same magnitude in the rest of the country. Fucking Detroit is a much nicer place to be than Seattle now, because _they're working on fixing their problems_. Seattle just blames Trump and warns against hobophobia, then continues along blindly.

These cities also have a housing affordability issue. They all refuse to build enough housing - especially mixed development. It’s not really a shock as to why homelessness is rising when you literally can’t afford a roof and everything else gets more expensive because of landlords leaching all the money out of the economy.

> a lack of a social safety net

That is so easy to disprove. SF spends 1.1B on homelessness (more than 50K per homeless person). Federal government spends 6-700B on medicaid (health services for poor). California's 2022-23 spending plan provides over $25 billion from the General Fund for human services programs.

Maybe, you can complain that that spending is "inefficient", but that becomes a political barb-trading after that.

It's replicated all over America, because the zoning policies adopted in the 70s-90s have proven disastrous, but Seattle is absolutely responsible for its part in failing to build enough housing to keep up with growth.