Swept

This is the sort of thing that drives resentment of the homeless population of the area, but doesn't actually spark any efforts towards fixing the problem. I will be unsurprised to find that the next time I'm in the area, the sidewalk, if not the entire encampment, has been cleared; this isn't the sort of thing that I expect the locals, even in a stereotypically liberal place like Seattle, will suffer gladly.
Unwalkable

Well, the next time I was in the area was yesterday, and somewhat to my surprise (considering how bad I am at predicting the future), the encampment was gone.

In its place were some nice planters; and some very large stones. While it's generally too much to expect people with substance abuse and/or other mental health problems to be good neighbors, there are apparently limits and the small encampment in Ballard crossed them. The result being that the city (most likely) has made camping in the area much more difficult than it had been before.

And simply clearing the camp and placing large objects to prevent tents being pitched again the the future doesn't do anything to solve the problem. More than likely, the people who had been living in the camps are still homeless; they've just been pushed elsewhere. Which may be enough for the locals to declare victory. Of course, elsewhere might not be very happy with that turn of events. Which runs the risk of a race to the bottom, as neighborhoods compete to be the least welcoming of the homeless.

The problem, as it exists now, has been building for decades. I moved out here a quarter-century ago, and one of the first things that struck me about the area was the rather large number of homeless people, compared to Chicago. My first impression was that Seattle was simply a more clement place to be homeless than Chicago, where the summers and the winters can be severe enough to be fatal. But in the meantime, I've learned that there are more deliberate reasons. Rocks and planters won't lower the high cost of housing, or create more places to build. That takes political action; which there isn't much motivation for at this point.