February 22, 2006

SHORT TAKES

Power Rangers

New fencing, fewer trees, and park rangers were the main target of public comments at a Jan. 18 public forum at a city forum on downtown’s parks.

About 20 people took part in the forum to voice concerns about recommendations from Mayor Nickels’ Downtown Parks and Public Spaces Taskforce. Members of the task force and a sub-committee gave a presentation outlining their plan, then took comments from those in attendance.

One person voicing a concern about the rangers, Dave Giles, wanted to know how they would interact with people in the park, especially the visibly homeless. Members of the task force sought to reassure those who are worried the rangers will harass the homeless that that is not the committee’s intention.

Ken Bounds, superintendent of Seattle parks, said that the presence of the rangers is meant to provide a presence in the park to help discourage crime and increase safety. “Safety is about the law, not about what you look like,” Bounds said.

Board member Catherine Stanford said that “the media has made this an issue of the homeless, but it’s not, it’s about behavior.”

Giles doesn’t think that the task force members have any ill will toward the homeless, but his concern — shared by others in attendance — is that the rangers may not always differentiate between those who are causing trouble and those who are not.

— Justin Ellis

Speed Dating

The Committee to End Homelessness in King County recently launched a “dating service,” but not the kind one might imagine.

CEHKC, the Seattle/King County Coalition for the Homeless, and the non-profit Housing Development Consortium are working to solicit housing providers to apply for new state funding before a fast-approaching Feb. 15 deadline. The Washington State Housing Trust Fund (HTF) wants to allocate up to $8 million among housing providers who agree to make their units more affordable to the state’s poorest individuals.

HTF gives subsidies to housing for people earning below 50 percent of the area median income (AMI), about $31,000 for a family of two. “To house the homeless, you must be able to accommodate people making below 30 percent AMI,” says CEHKC project director Bill Block, “and many housing providers don’t have enough funding to do this. HTF is now proposing to give these providers more money so that they can lower the rent on existing units,” thereby making these units affordable to people with incomes in the lower brackets.

Looking to hook up the housing agencies with the counseling or treatment their new tenants may need, the dating service is part of the plan.

“ A number of people coming out of homelessness still need services. We’re trying to pair housing providers with service providers, such as case managers, chemical dependency counselors, and mental health counselors,” Block explains. “We hope that housing providers might be willing to serve people exiting homelessness if someone will provide services for their tenants.”

— Emma Dumain

Gesundheit!

There’s nothing like a loud sneeze to derail what someone is saying.

The sneeze that Seattle Times’ editorial writer Joni Balter let go of Monday while U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert was talking was so loud, in fact, it’s hard to believe she wasn’t making a point.

Balter was the MC at a luncheon with Reichert, the Auburn Republican who represents the Eastside, and one of his Democratic counterparts, Rep. Rick Larsen, of Everett. She posed questions to the two on a variety of topics. On Iraq, she asked if the two agree with Rep. John Murtha’s call to bring the troops home immediately.

No difference between the Democrat and the Republican on that one: Both said setting a timeline for withdrawal is not appropriate. “We were attacked. We are at war,” Reichert stressed. Larsen took exception.

“ The attack on Sept. 11, 2001, had nothing to do with Iraq,” Larsen said. “You can’t tie Iraq to the folks responsible for attacking the U.S.”

“ I think you can make a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida,” Reichert responded. “Yes, the intelligence was faulty, but there’s been much work done since that time—”

“ A-CHOOO!” Balter bellowed into her mic. The audience at the Washington Athletic Club burst into laughter.

Balter said it was accidental, and Reichert finished his thought: New intelligence, he said, does show a connection. Of course, since the invasion, Larsen joked, the once top-down al-Qaida has become more like a franchise name for terrorist groups.

— Cydney Gillis