Seattle parents forced to dodge tents and needles on school walks as Mount Baker collapses

When Mount Baker neighbors in Seattle recently documented 49 tent encampments and 5 vehicle encampments within just a few blocks of schools, transit stations, grocery stores, parks and daycare centers, they weren’t conducting an academic exercise. They were mapping a crisis that has made their neighborhood unlivable. Their experience reveals everything wrong with Seattle’s approach to homelessness and public safety.

I’ve spent years cleaning camps through We Heart Seattle, and I can tell you that what’s happening in Mount Baker isn’t unique. It’s the result of policies prioritizing the appearance of compassion over actual solutions.

The question isn’t whether clearing downtown encampments and pushing problems to neighborhoods like Mount Baker is racist—though it absolutely impacts communities of color disproportionately. The real question is why we continue strategies that help no one while harming everyone.

Parents are in fear

The Mount Baker meeting notes tell a story that should shame every city voter who continues to not show up at the ballot box or vote in the same leaders unwilling to enforce the law.

Parents can’t walk their children to school because encampments block sidewalks in designated school zones. A person from the Lighthouse for the Blind was forced into traffic because camps completely blocked accessibility routes. QFC is hiring armed security due to escalating crime, while residents drive to Mercer Island rather than shop locally because of open drug use outside their neighborhood store.

When the city’s response is to tell parents to “choose safety and take a different route” to school, we’ve abandoned any pretense of equal public safety standards across neighborhoods.

This morning in forgotten Mt. Baker Neighborhood we cleared another greenbelt full of trash, stolen planter boxes, and three bowling balls! Neighbors pulled over with coffee, doughnuts and personal stories of the crime and untenable drug use activity. We Heart Mt. Baker!… pic.twitter.com/LFY10G9P9L

— We Heart Seattle (@weheartseattle) August 27, 2025

Broken-windows theory at work

The late criminologist George Kelling understood something we’ve forgotten: visible disorder doesn’t just reflect community breakdown—it accelerates it. His broken windows theory wasn’t about criminalizing poverty; it was about recognizing that unaddressed dysfunction creates conditions where both vulnerable populations and entire communities suffer. Mount Baker is a textbook case study.

Consider what neighbors found during volunteer cleanups: human waste, drug needles, used condoms, foil used for fentanyl, prescription drugs scattered on the ground, a pistol, live bullets, razor blades, and broken glass. This isn’t housing insecurity—it’s an active public health emergency that we’re pretending doesn’t exist.

The crime reports tell the rest of the story: car break-ins at 4:30 AM, garage thefts, prowlers, a recent shooting death, suspected arsons at encampments, and daily open drug use. Many residents have stopped reporting crimes because they’ve lost faith in meaningful response. When people stop calling police because nothing changes, falling crime statistics become meaningless.

Tools we must be willing to use

Mount Baker’s experience with Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) offers hope by taxing ourselves again, but only if we’re honest about what we’re addressing. New York’s success with citizen-led service districts came from sustained, community-driven accountability that actually solved problems rather than shuffling them around. A Mount Baker BIA could work, but only if paired with genuine interventions, not just displacement.

The fundamental issue is our refusal to distinguish between a housing crisis and a drug crisis. The evidence from Mount Baker is overwhelming: this is primarily about addiction and mental health, with housing serving as one component of a complex web of untreated illness. The University of Washington laying off 32 nurses this spring while leaders claim we need “more places for people to go” reveals the absurdity of our resource understanding.

We have tools that work, but we refuse to use them. Ricky’s Law, championed by progressive Lauren Davis and passed in 2018, allows involuntary treatment when someone with substance use disorder cannot make rational decisions about their need for care. Joel’s Law provides similar family intervention for severe mental illness. These aren’t punitive measures—they’re therapeutic interventions that acknowledge some individuals cannot make decisions about their own care while in active addiction or acute mental health crisis.

NEW: Seattle voters say the homeless drug crisis remains a top three issue.
But the Harrell administration is still engaged in a game of Whack-a-Mole and has failed to find long term solutions. That’s because they’re not addressing the drivers of this humanitarian disaster which… pic.twitter.com/0QzLNT0cQS

— Jonathan Choe (@choeshow) June 10, 2025

‘Necessary but insufficient’

The progressive community’s resistance to civil commitment stems from valid historical concerns about abuse. But our current approach—allowing people to deteriorate and die on the streets while calling it “choice”—isn’t humane. It’s abandonment disguised as civil liberties. Meanwhile, working families in Mount Baker watch their community collapse while being told their safety concerns are secondary to abstract principles about autonomy.

Real equity means refusing to accept that Mount Baker residents should endure conditions we wouldn’t tolerate in wealthier neighborhoods. When encampments force disabled community members into traffic, when children can’t walk to school safely, when local businesses close due to crime, we’re not demonstrating compassion—we’re enabling community destruction.

The short-term actions from Mount Baker’s meeting—clearing sidewalk-blocking encampments, removing camps (drug scenes) from Parks, increasing patrols—are necessary but insufficient. Without civil commitment tools, without judges willing to order treatment, without sustained intervention that breaks the cycle of emergency room visits and brief shelter stays, these measures become expensive exercises in futility. A drug friendly culture overhaul is a path out.

This is doable

Mount Baker neighbors aren’t asking for miracles. They want to walk to the light rail station Seattle insists they should use. They want their children to reach school safely. They want local businesses that can survive without armed security. They want parks like Cheasty, Judkins, and Genesse, to be “the pride of Seattle” rather than a needle-strewn danger zone.

These aren’t unreasonable demands—they’re basic expectations of functional community life that we’ve somehow decided are optional in certain zip codes.

The choice before us is clear: we can continue the current path of expensive ineffectiveness that destroys communities while helping no one, or we can embrace evidence-based solutions that work. That means involuntary treatment when necessary, sustained therapeutic intervention, and acknowledging that order and compassion aren’t opposing values—they’re complementary necessities for healthy communities.

Mount Baker neighbors have done their part by documenting the crisis, engaging with city officials, and organizing community responses. Now it’s time for leaders to match their commitment with policies that actually work. Anything less is a betrayal of both the struggling individuals on our streets and the communities that house them.

The time for comfortable lies about our current approach is over. Mount Baker deserves better. Seattle deserves better. And the vulnerable people caught in this system of systematic failure deserve solutions that actually save lives.

Andrea Suarez is a community activist and founder of We Heart Seattle.