April Fools in Seattle

April Fools Day is coming.

Which means the seasonal shelters are shutting down for another six months. Forty women are going to get dumped out of one shelter; the program funded by King County for 50 men will be shut for the season.

I imagine Tim Harris drooling over the prospects for biting comments on the meanness of it all.

Or maybe I shall beat him to the punch.

We have this awful wicked mindset, that homeless people don't have to be sheltered while we're devising methods to throw them into newly built apartments, which aren't even on line yet.

The main point: We don't want people to die outside in ways that make the city look bad. Don't worry if they're miserable (as long as we don't have to look at them in their misery).

Here are some of my proposals:

• If the city can't afford basic humane comforts for homeless people in April and May, the city can't afford to heat city offices either. Use the savings for survival.
• If Queen Anne residents don't like homeless people in the greenbelts, let there be a LID assessment and use the money to ship the folks who are upset back to Hunt's Point.
• Open up the Seattle Center for 24 hour shelter. Let's just see how homeless people don't want to go inside.
• Let Tim Harris run the city for three months. The snow would melt, the flowers would bloom, and the millionaires would run for the hills.

OK, it's too close to lunch to continue thinking this hard.

R