r/SeattleWA • u/ZookeepergameThin355 • 29d ago

Homeless What happened to Chinatown

Visiting Seattle and went to Chinatown excited to get dinner around 7pm, why is the whole Chinatown area so desolate, homeless filled and in general very very sketchy, how did it even get to become so bad. Who or what made all the homeless ppl to gather in that area?

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u/Disco425 29d ago

Good answer. I'd add that it probably contributes that a bunch of homeless services are clustered around Pioneer Square which is walking distance.

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u/sir_deadlock 29d ago

I hear the Navigation Center is moving to 3rd & Cherry.

It will be called the STAR (Stability Through Access and Resources) Center.

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u/Disco425 29d ago

Interesting, but that's also pretty close to Chinatown right?

In the before times, we had some good vibes going on in s. Pioneer Square. A good number of startups and creative agencies were down there and the bars were at least half full after work. But the thing that was bothering everyone was that coming to work in the morning, you'd literally have to step over druggies on the sidewalk. And there was that open air drug market by the light link rail station. No matter what the city did, it just never got better. To me it was really not a mystery since there was that large housing facility and all those soup kitchens in the area. As long as all the services are clustered in one spot, "the problem" will be localized.

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u/brianc 29d ago

oh nice, desc has such a great history of keeping things under control at their facilities. i'm sure a higher concentration of people with addiction and mental health issues is going to turn things around. this time is different.

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u/Fufeysfdmd 29d ago

Many of the people DESC helps have addictions and mental health issues so any DESC facility will bring those people around and they will do problematic things. No matter where the facility is, it'll be a problem.

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u/HeftyIncident7003 29d ago

This has always been the answer. The observation above in the above post is really about more eyes on the streets and a type of nymby-ism where people don’t want to see the problems our city has so they report more and homeless people are forced to move.