It’s no news to anyone who lives on the West Coast that such cities as Portland, Seattle and San Francisco are in the midst of a homelessness crisis, and the issues that are associated with it. A recent TV documentary about the situation for our neighbor to the north takes a particularly grim view, as the title, “Seattle Is Dying,” may indicate.
The hourlong special, which first aired on KOMO-TV in Seattle on Saturday, March 16, has prompted strong reactions from viewers who say “Seattle Is Dying” gets it right, and those who object to the special as missing the mark.
Not surprisingly, the documentary’s images of homeless campsites, dismayed tourists, business owners talking about shoplifting, and other video clips have prompted some to say it mirrors what’s going on in Portland. “Seattle Is Dying” can be seen on YouTube, where hundreds of commenters have weighed in, including one who says, “Portland is just as bad.”
Writing on the Nextdoor website, where discussions of homelessness are a common theme, a Portlander posted a link to “Seattle Is Dying,” writing, “This is Portland, too. On Seattle’s homeless. Very well done.”
Another Portland Nextdoor poster responded: “Disturbing and way too much like Portland, indeed. Hopefully, we can all learn from this (and other reporting like this) and find solutions to our problems moving forward. It’s so hard to remain compassionate and find the necessary level of humanity to deal with these serious problems. I think every part of our political system needs to seek out and find more balance.”
The “Seattle Is Dying” special is written and reported by KOMO’s Eric Johnson, who Portland viewers with long memories may recall as a KGW-TV journalist in the early 1990s. In the documentary, Johnson mentions police who say the city’s lax enforcement policies have tied their hands; features citizens who say they’re fed up with Seattle officials doing nothing about theft and other crimes they associate with the homeless; includes comments from local business owners who also feel frustrated by what they describe as a lack of action; and shows video clips of people who appear mentally ill or altered as they slump on downtown sidewalks or scream at passersby.
In a post on the KOMO website, Johnson writes: “Seattle Is Dying. It’s a harsh title. Someone on social media even called it a ‘hopeless’ title. I’ll admit to you that I wrestled with the name for some time. Too dramatic, I wondered? Too dark? In the end I went with it because I believe it to be true. I believe that Seattle is dying. Rotting from within.”
Johnson says “Seattle Is Dying” is “really the third in a kind of trilogy.” The first report explored “homelessness from the inside out,” and the second one was about “the hellish existence of heroin addiction.”
“This one,” he writes, “is about everyone else. It’s about citizens who don’t feel safe taking their families into downtown Seattle. It’s about parents who won’t take their children into the public parks they pay for. It’s about filth and degradation all around us. And theft and crime. It’s about people who don’t feel protected anymore, who don’t feel like their voices are being heard.”
Johnson continues: “This program is not about demonizing those who are struggling with addiction and homelessness and mental illness. On the contrary. Instead, it asks the question, ‘Why aren’t we doing more? Why don’t we have the courage to intervene in lives that are, in the face of a grave sickness, reeling out of control?’”
While many of the commenters on social media have applauded “Seattle Is Dying,” others have criticized it for painting a sensationalistic portrait. Writing on the website for The Stranger, Charles Mudede called KOMO “the local iteration of Trump TV” (KOMO is owned, as is Portland’s KATU, by the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group). Mudede says the special is an example of mainstream media blaming the poor, and how this is a reflection of a society that “criminalizes the condition of poverty” rather than call out the excessive wealth of “the Bezoses or the Shultzes,” as Mudede writes.
“In one moment of ‘Seattle Is Dying,’ a camera mounted on a drone rises from the human filth on a hill and slowly turns to the towers of tech, municipal, and financial power,” Mudede writes. “In this inverted/perverted KOMO world, the shock is not that the business district is right next to a homeless camp, but that a homeless camp is right next to the business district. There is an important difference between the two perspectives. In the second, the camp of misery is not about the city killing many of its people, but extremely poor people killing an affluent city. Now that is rich.”
The debate continued on Twitter. A few samples:
-- Kristi Turnquist
kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist
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