I lived there for about a decade and now live about 40 miles south of Seattle. From what I have seen, all of the big cities on the west coast are currently in a rough state. The homeless and their encampments have simply overwhelmed significant parts of them. We had three murders and a machete fight within a quarter mile of my workplace last year and I've been subpoenaed as a witness to a murder that took place near my house last fall. The murders near my workplace were all encampment related and there were several encampments there. The murder near my house was apparently domestic violence.How long have you lived there?
Things really got out of hand during covid, but Tacoma has actually gotten much better in the past year. They started sweeping the encampments in earnest about a year ago and they have prevented most of them from reforming. I used to have to repair the fences around my workplace every month or so, but since the encampments have been cleared we haven't had our fences cut once. A lot of them have now spread out into neighborhoods where you never used to see them but on the whole I'd say their numbers here are down about 65%.
From what I understand, Seattle hasn't been nearly as aggressive in clearing the encampments out and when they do they usually re-form within weeks.
Another thing I haven't seen nearly as much of in the past year or two are used needles. It seems like the addicts have moved on to smoking fentanyl rather than injecting heroin.
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