Jason Rantz: Seattle on life assist – this is why companies and residents are fleeing

Seattle entrepreneurs have been plagued by violent crime and uncontrollable homelessness and have made it. They leave the city before their employees or customers are seriously injured. The residents are following suit.

Seattleites are being chased by aggressive, mentally ill homeless people. Professionals avoid human waste on sidewalks when going to business meetings. Antifa riots are still razing store fronts, fatal overdoses are mounting and police are leaving the thigh department in historic numbers.

Seattle is life sustaining while the mayor and city council are silent about the deepening crisis.

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A number of business closings have hit Seattle, threatening the city’s COVID recovery. In downtown Seattle alone, over 160 companies have permanently closed their doors, according to a new report. A vacancy rate of 12% was created – a five-year high. While area activists accuse COVID, the businessmen who leave are clear with their motivations.

“We had an employee who was chased into a Starbucks,” Megan Gluth-Bohan told a local TV station. “Business associates who came to meetings avoided human feces and homeless people on the sidewalk … [An employee] had the driver’s window downstairs and was working on the parking machine and someone was trying to get into her car. ”

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Gluth-Bohan is the CEO of TR International, a global chemical distributor who has called Downtown Seattle his home for over two decades. They move to Edmonds, Washington, about 15 minutes north. She is not alone.

“These people, because they are in poverty or are addicted to drugs or whatever you want to call it, [city leaders] allow them to get away with anything they want to do, “Car Tender’s Mason McDermott told me on my Seattle-based talk radio show.

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He and his father grew tired of the city’s fringe politics, especially after their auto repair shop was trapped in the middle of the deadly Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and radicals threatened to burn it down if they didn’t do what they said they’d do. They moved their business 10 miles north to Shoreline, Wash.

Jamie Munson, owner of Seattle, simply closed his downtown location to focus on e-commerce. It reached its breaking point.

“A number of break-ins, bricks through our windows, people just walking in in large groups in broad daylight with loads of equipment,” he complained. “Difficult to operate while ensuring the safety of our employees.”

These complaints are not new, but they are getting louder as the city is still affected by the Inauguration Day unrest by anti-fascist agitators. The mob burned American flags, destroyed ICE agent offices and the Federal Immigration Court, and destroyed corporate storefronts, including the original Starbucks in the iconic Pike Place Market.

Downtown corporate groups released a joint statement calling on city officials to “immediately denounce these extremists. Officials must send a strong message that attacks, hate speech and property crimes are not welcome in Seattle and that those who participate will be held accountable become.”

City parks are crowded with aggressive homeless people in tents, surrounded by trash, needles, and human waste.

The request was ignored. Instead, the council plowed ahead, which made the situation worse. In fact, last year the city council ignored the city’s troubles and tripled the policies that put Seattle in its precarious position.

They passed laws that handcuffed police reactions to the kind of rallies that turned into the inauguration day mob that companies complained about. Councilor Lisa Herbold is devising a “Poverty Reduction” that effectively legalizes most misdemeanor crimes when the suspect is either homeless or an addict. Councilor Teresa Mosqueda led a potentially crippling wage tax – during a pandemic – that was just about to go into effect.

When businesses go, the residents follow. The Downtown Seattle Association reports a staggering 10.4% vacancy rate for apartments, with downtown losing 1,594 households in 2020.

It’s hard to justify paying high rents in Seattle with crime and homelessness skyrocketing, especially when you can’t enjoy amenities like parks that residents pay high taxes to maintain.

City parks are crowded with aggressive homeless people in tents, surrounded by trash, needles, and human waste.

In Miller Park, Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, city officials refuse to intervene in a growing camp. Used needles are strewn all over the place, and car break-ins are as common as fights. It got so bad that the Seattle Youth Soccer Association stopped using the park for safety reasons.

Meanwhile, the murder rate in Seattle rose by a staggering 61% in 2020 – the highest number of murders in 26 years. And with rape rising – 29 cases were recorded in January – people are scared.

Seattle is the harbinger for Washington. As I said on my radio show, Seattle always had bad politics. And you have. With one-party control in the state parliament and in the office of governor, the Democrats pushed ahead with a number of radical bills.

They decriminalize hard drugs, effectively legalize them, and pass the same permissive policies that crush Seattle. Another approach is that of Seattle’s approach to providing criminals with endless opportunities by having courts ignore juvenile crimes of adult defendants when sentencing. A so-called “wealth tax,” mimicking Seattle’s voracious appetite for taxes, hits the state hands. There’s also the gas tax, which could add up to $ 1 a gallon, and a capital gains tax – while the state tries to recover from the pandemic.

We’re starting to see signs that residents are ready to leave as the Seattle sneak hits other cities in Washington.

In U-Haul’s annual migration report, Washington went from fifth most important place of residence to 36th place. To fall that far, people have to flee. For North American Moving Services, the percentage of customers who came to Washington from Washington was 49% versus 51%.

Billionaire businessman Peter Rex moved his tech company to Austin, Texas because Washington was “hostile to the principles and guidelines that enable people, in the broadest sense, to live abundantly.” He also cited the autonomous zone behind his decision.

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Joey Rodolfo took a similar step. Sick of the area’s love affair with socialist politics, he relocated the luxury sportswear company he co-founded 38 years ago to Tucson, Arizona.

As is so often the case, the writing hangs on the wall. We see the crisis, we see the residents flee and we see the data on the victims pile up. Unfortunately, we still see politicians ignoring the issues and promoting ideologically motivated politics that will only make the situation worse.

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