Sheltered

I live in the suburbs of Seattle, in a fairly faceless town that, like most suburbs, blends into the towns that border it. Not very far away, there used to be a shopping mall. It was in the process of dying when I first moved out here in the late 1990's but, like a lot of places of the sort, took forever to finally expire. It's a much smaller set of retail stores now, and the sort of big, upper-middle-class apartment and condominium development that the towns old-timers like to complain about. (Because, apparently, anything bigger than townhomes just destroys the "character: of everything within a 20-mile radius. But actually, I suspect because they fear that density will slow the growth of the equity in their homes. Housing shortages do that to people.)

In any event, there are still remnants of the old shopping district that have yet to be torn down and turned into multi-family housing, among which is an old hotel. Long abandoned, while it awaits replacement, it's become home to a number of homeless people. Which is, basically, what you would expect. While Seattle-area weather is mostly clement, the rainy season is in full effect right about now, and I wouldn't wish living out-of-doors on anyone. Sure, they may not freeze to death, as people were wont to do in Chicago winters, but staying dry is just as important as staying warm when one doesn't have reliable access to health care. The hotel, or rather, it's current occupants, have been a source of some consternation online, as a self-proclaimed "urban explorer" wondered why they hadn't been run out of the building already. "What are homeless people even doing in this town?" they asked.

Maybe it's just me, but I find it strange to ask why there are homeless people in a place where home prices routinely hit $1,000,000, and a family needs to be making in the area of a good $110,000 a year if they want to only spend a third of their take-home on rent. (Around here, utilities are almost always extra.) What I find surprising is that there seem to be so few homeless people in the immediate area. There was a person living out of their van around the corner for a while, but they disappeared over the summer, and never returned. I'd like to think they found something better, but I'm not holding my breath on that. It's not like it's difficult to find people like shop clerks or wait staff who are unlikely to be making the $25 or $30 plus an hour they would need to afford a nearby place.

And this is the thing about living in the suburbs, either here or in the Midwest. There's a set of people who believe that simply being some arbitrary distance from Downtown wherever means that none of the problems of modern life should trouble them. Rather, those problems should be bundled into the poorer urban neighborhoods, where they need never go. It's an insularity that renders people out of touch with what's going on around them, and what other people are reacting to.

I've spent enough time wandering Seattle and the suburbs with a camera to understand that the homeless are everywhere that they aren't routinely chased out of. And some places where they are. When I first came out here, I was genuinely impressed by the number of people who lived out of doors, And that was well before the burgeoning technology industry had brought enough high salaries into the area that housing was becoming scarce. (There's a lot to be said for living in place where the elements don't constantly conspire to kill one.) And I've talked to a number of these people. They're simply trying to get by, and, for the most part, stay out the way. Maybe they do a bit too good of a job of the second.