Honestly, it’s much better than I’m used to. In a day of walking around, only one drugged out person was screaming uncontrollably. When he saw me, he politely asked for a light, and I said no, so he went back to screaming at nothing in particular.
It’s not like I was tripping on human feces (SF, post-pandemic, though they seemed to have cleaned things up a bit for APEC) or needles (various cities in Europe, pre-pandemic).
I don’t mean to trivialize the problems in Seattle. It is much worse than it was. However, it’s better than average these days.
At least in California, housing shortages are a big root cause, as is the broken approach to mental health care: It’s basically illegal to treat someone during a psychotic episode until they’ve already committed some serious violent crimes.
Portland and Seattle in the past few years look completely different than they did even a few years ago. Both cities have always had run down parts, but now it feels like the blight permeates almost everything. Some of my favorite places to visit have either closed entirely or now have limited hours and require me to buzz in at the front door so someone can visually verify that I'm not a threat. I can't explain how strange it feels for this shift to have happened in a matter of years.