Background

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We are mapping the areas in which homeless people gather around a small area inside Downtown Seattle. We chose to map this because homelessness has become an ever-increasing problem in Seattle and we wanted to better understand the issue.

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Variables

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Variables would be where the homeless are, the amount of homeless in one area, the amount of tourists in one area, and the gender of the homeless people.

 

Defined Area

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Our defined area spanned from Occidental Square to the Showbox theater and from 3rd AVE to the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

 

 

Findings

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We discovered the problem of homelessness to be far more complex than just mapping where the homeless people are. Many variables were noticed that we had not previously thought about, such as the gender of the homeless people we saw. Most of the homeless people we saw were men, and we were not sure why this was. We also found that there seems to be a negative correlation between the tourist population and the homeless population. It seemed that in more densely populated tourist areas, there were fewer groups of homeless people and vise versa.

 

Research

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From Hooverville to the housing crisis of the 1970s to today, homelessness has always been an issue in Seattle. In March of 2005, the city of Seattle introduced a 10-year plan to end homelessness. This plan involved housing, services, business, organizations, and local governments. However, 10 years later, the plan ended, and homelessness was worse than ever, and it is clear that Seattle has to do more to fix the problem. As of May 2018, more than 70% of the unsheltered homeless in King County live in Seattle and most of them are men (61%.) With rising levels of tourism, it is becoming more important to the city to fix the problem. Recently, there have been moves to clean up homeless camps within the city and homeless camps along highways.

Some other issues that rose with the rate of homelessness was violence. There has been a significant increase on the threat of violence from homeless people that are directed towards firefighters, tourists, and other homeless people. There was an incident of unprovoked physical attack on a tourist from a homeless male in Seattle Center which drew a lot of media attention and has provoked the State politicians to make improvements; State Senator Steve Hobbs said that “It is time to intervene.”

 

Helpful Information

 

Since this is an ever-changing problem, it would be useful to see the past relationship between tourist areas and the homeless density. We would also like to see more information available on resolutions to the issue of homelessness in Seattle. As homelessness affects a wide variety of people for an infinite amount of reasons, we like to be able to find the significant causes of the issue in our area. We also would like to know locations of food shelters and soup kitchens to see the denseness of the homeless in this area. Additionally, information such as the movement pattern of the homeless could be useful to know where they are during a certain period. This observation will be helpful to remove mapping bias.

 

How our map could possibly be misleading, speak to issues of equity, or other ways that our map could be used to “lie”

 

Our map could be misleading because it is incapable of showing that the homeless always hang out at the same spots because homeless people could migrate somewhere else due to reasons like weather, change of tourist attraction or police enforcement. Being homeless doesn’t allow you to stay in one spot permanently, so the homeless move constantly, looking for places to rest or find food. This makes our map to accurately predict the future locations of homeless people, but it does give some insight into why they are there.

 

 

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Work Cited

 

 

2018 count shows 8,600 people homeless in Seattle. (2018, June 01). Retrieved from http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2018/05/2018-homeless-count-shows-8600-people-living-unsheltered-in-seattle/

 

A History of Homelessness in Seattle. (2017, June 28). Retrieved from https://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2017/6/28/a-history-of-homelessness-in-seattle

 

Homeless in Seattle: The roots of a crisis. (2016, July 26). Retrieved from http://features.crosscut.com/homeless-in-seattle-the-roots-of-a-crisis

 

Ryan, J. (n.d.). After 10-Year Plan, Why Does Seattle Have More Homeless Than Ever? Retrieved from http://archive.kuow.org/post/after-10-year-plan-why-does-seattle-have-more-homeless-ever

 

Scott, H. (2018, June 29). Threats to firefighters in Pioneer Square, homeless camps escalating. Retrieved November 19, 2018, from http://mynorthwest.com/1034801/firefighters-pioneer-square-threats/

 

Staff, M. (2018, June 15). Will threat to Seattle tourism spark fiercer homeless response? Retrieved from http://mynorthwest.com/1020822/seattle-tourism-homeless-threat/