Socialist Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson debuted 50 of 1000 planned tiny homes for homeless residents on Sunday, as the city works to manage its homelessness problem ahead of the World Cup.
Twenty-five more are expected to be completed by the end of the month. Wilson said homeless people will not be required to be sober or undergo addiction or recovery treatment to live there, KOMO reported.
“The process of recovery is really complicated and difficult, and so we’re not demanding that people be abstinent when they enter this village,” the 43-year-old mayor said:
Wilson admitted that the city had failed to reach her goal of building 500 units ahead of the World Cup, which is beginning on Thursday.
“Is it a failure not to have created 500 units by now? As long as there are thousands of people sleeping unsheltered on our streets, yes, we are failing,” Wilson said.
She said she believes there will be 300 more tiny homes throughout Seattle by the end of the summer, but she will not meet her goal of 1,000 units.
Wilson’s goal of stashing homeless people in $16,000 shacks ahead of a huge public event that draws many spectators comes as she faces criticism for her left-wing policies and her disdain for wealthy residents.
Washington state Democrats passed a 9.9 percent income tax in March for households that make more than $1 million a year. Recent polling shows over half (55 percent) of Washington State business leaders are considering moving their personal residences to another state, up from 44 percent from earlier this year.
Wilson, who was financially supported by her family, shrugged off the poll and said such concerns are “overblown,” the New York Post reported.
“I still think that claims of a large exodus of rich people due to our statewide millionaire tax that the legislature passed this year are overblown,” Wilson said during an interview with FOX 13 Seattle last week.
“When I think about the last five months and the things that I and my administration have done to build bridges with the business community, the narrative that was spun around those things is very, very out of step with the reality,” Wilson said.
She also claimed that large corporations based in Washington, like T-Mobile, Starbucks, and Microsoft, all back her tiny homes for the homeless.
“This narrative that it’s like Seattle socialist mayor versus Starbucks, like well, then why are they donating a million dollars to our shelter site?” Wilson said.
Some local advocates quickly ripped the plan, many saying it will only make drug use more widespread there, raising the risks for anyone living nearby.
“Drugs aren’t free,” Andrea Suarez, founder of the homeless outreach organization We Heart Seattle, told Fox News, saying that “deadly” drugs like “super meth and fentanyl…will be allowed on this property.”
“So what do people have to do to fuel their addiction? They have to porch-prowl, smash and grab, retail theft, syphon gas … prostitution,” she forecast, adding that locals will likely have to “be on lockdown.”
“It’s very hard to get better and seek treatment when the fox is guarding the henhouse,” she said, noting that people living in the tiny homes will be surrounded by dealers and fellow addicts. “It’s very hard to get sober when everything makes you actually more comfortable being a drug addict.”
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