Seattle’s Classist Xenophobia Won’t Solve Homelessness

“Are you from around here?”

Like a scene straight out of an Octavia Butler horror story, in a panel discussion about Charter Amendment 29, former Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran urged Seattlietes to consider: “If you expand housing of various kinds […] it may well produce a migratory effect.” (49:00) Sidran went on to describe how he and Mayor Durkan suspect that many unhoused Seattlites are not from around here. Danny Westneat, the panel’s moderator, interjected: “Two thirds of Seattle are also not from Seattle, including me. The whole issue of where people are from seems…” Westneat trailed off, “I agree that certain public policies can draw people to different places sometimes, but I’ve never bought that people end up living under the I-5 bridge because they love the soggy Wonderbread sandwiches they get from the mission truck.”

“They’re not from around here,” sounds like something John Wayne would drawl in a racist film from the 1950s. And yet, this classist xenophobic statement is something I hear uttered repeatedly in Seattle, a city where 7 out of 10 residents are from “somewhere else”.

Mark Sidran’s suggestion is no different than saying that he and his family should not be allowed to buy a home anywhere outside his childhood Seattle neighborhood of Rainier Valley. Mark…