It’s supposed to be a tiny urban park enjoyed by the locals. Maybe you grab an apple danish or kugelhopf with coffee at nearby Bakery Nouveau and enjoy a morning chat with a friend. But instead of using our precious green space, Williams Place Park in Capitol Hill has been overrun by homeless, the site completely trashed, all thanks to the lack of attention by Councilwoman Kshama Sawant.
The park on 15th and East John is a great example of Sawant’s inattention to her own district. Wander by on any morning, as I do every weekend, and you’ll see homeless men and women strewn about. The benches are almost always occupied by a passed out homeless person. There’s trash absolutely everywhere, including, bizarrely, right behind or on top of a nearby trash bin.
Sometimes the homeless loiter; other times, they get undressed. Sometimes they argue with each other, and sometimes they just lounge around doing nothing. The park is no longer the community’s — it’s been ceded over to homeless who don’t appear willing to take the city up on resources meant to help them.
It’s not that we don’t have resources for these folks; it’s that we don’t have the political will to successfully approach the problem as they do in Marysville. Sawant gets in the way of that, even orchestrating opposition to department leaders to sandbag Mayor Jenny Durkan’s nominees.
This is what happens in communities that have either given up, or have a councilmember so unattached to her own community, that she has no idea what’s going on. Sawant focuses on topics she can nationalize — minimum wage, union power, rent control — at the expense of what she’s supposed to do: Be a voice for her community.
https://mynorthwest.com/1483815/sawant-district-park-homelessness-trash/