Seattle reduced disorder downtown. But it didn’t go far.

SEATTLE — For more than a year after Mayor Bruce Harrell announced his Downtown Activation Plan, it seemed like nothing would work.

He threw the kitchen sink at making downtown Seattle look cleaner and feel safer for tourists, workers, and shoppers. A project to end homelessness downtown, a team to monitor and de-escalate conflicts on Third Avenue, extra police presence, lights crisscrossing the streets.

Despite that, public drug use, illicit markets and disorder in the area persisted, and by some metrics, grew.

But in the last two months, a combination of arrests and street cleanings has turned the effort around. Crime, police calls for drug activity, and the number of people occupying streets there have decreased.

But as one neighborhood’s crisis subsided, another’s surged.

Homeless people and people seeking drugs moved to the Chinatown International District, leading to complaints from residents and business owners there. Nine people were stabbed in two days in November, and while it is unclear whether the stabbings were connected to the visible disorder, community members said it makes life increasingly precarious.

People living on the streets, on the other hand, feel like they’re being herded and are asking where they can go.

Harrell acknowledged the migration and directed the city to mirror the tactics it used to clear out downtown in Chinatown International District.

That, too, is starting to work. But as people leave Little Saigon, they will likely move either farther from public view or to different neighborhoods as the city struggles to keep up with indoor spaces for them to go.

Results downtown

Earlier this summer, there were times Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association, couldn’t walk downtown’s sidewalks due to the number of people there using and selling drugs, he said.

Since then, his organization’s staff, who record the times they see people use and sell drugs on downtown sidewalks, has seen activity drop by two-thirds. Numbers in September and October are down 50% compared with the same period last year.

Drug-related police calls dropped in the area by a third in October compared with the previous four months, according to data from Seattle Police Department.

“It’s a different place today,” Scholes said. “This idea that you can come to this place and purchase drugs and use drugs freely and openly has really been disrupted.”

We Deliver Care, a team that patrols and de-escalates conflict on Third Avenue, also described the thick crowds of people in the area as cut in half.

“The difference is like day and night,” said Dominique Davis, co-founder of We Deliver Care.

Rick Yoder, owner of restaurants Wild Ginger and The Triple Door on Third Avenue, has seen a “marked improvement,” and said his businesses have noticed a reduction in street incidents and building damage.

At a November news conference, Harrell used an acronym to explain what’s worked to reduce disorder around Third Avenue — ACT — which stands for arrest, clean and treat.

“You arrest bad people. You clean dirty areas, and you treat sick people,” Harrell said.

Seattle police officers have ramped up arrests for public drug use and dealing in recent months after their initial push in fall 2023 tapered off. Since July, Seattle and King County have been working to lift jail booking restrictions for misdemeanors starting in specific areas like downtown.

In the third quarter of this year, Seattle police arrested 62 people downtown for violating the city’s drug ordinance, about double the number they arrested in spring. The King County Sheriff’s Office pitched in, making 37 drug-related arrests downtown in August and September, more than they had in the past two years.

Seattle police had not yet begun enforcing the city’s “Stay Out of Drug Area” and “Stay Out of Area of Prostitution” laws as of November, but that could drive numbers higher. The Third Avenue Project helped almost 60 people move into housing and more into shelter in the past two years, but leaders acknowledge that doesn’t account for the dramatic change in the past two months.

The city paired a crackdown with a scrub down. Since the beginning of September, the city has power-washed sidewalks around Third Avenue between Pike and Pine at least twice, often three times a day. Police accompany the cleaning teams to make sure people get out of the way.

Daniel Fenix, 24, who is homeless and spent nearly every day on Third Avenue for the past two years, said the streets need cleaning, but thinks there may be a dual purpose.

“I see them clean the street when it’s already clean and they do it again to push people away,” Fenix said.

Fenix said police encounters have also become more frequent and physical in recent months, saying one officer grabbed him by his shirt in a recent interaction. As a result, he said he and his friends decided to follow others to Little Saigon.

“It’s safer to be in the crowd,” Fenix said. “They don’t pick on you specifically.”

Moved to Little Saigon

At the same time drug-related police calls decreased on Third Avenue, they surged in Little Saigon, up about a third in October compared with the four months prior.

REACH, an organization that provides outreach for homeless people in Little Saigon, saw a 60% spike in October of the number of people they were making contact with there.

Find It Fix It App requests, which residents can use to report issues to the city, doubled in Chinatown International District in October compared with the rest of 2024.

Gary Lee, co-chair of the Chinatown International District Public Safety Council, said 12th Avenue between King and Jackson was always occupied by disorder, but previously, only half the sidewalk was full.

“Now, it’s all full, 100% full at the peak time, and it even wraps around towards Jackson Street,” Lee said in November.

He described the relationship between Third Avenue and Little Saigon as like a balloon, saying squeezing one side causes the other to expand.

Harrell acknowledges the relationship.

“There is a connection between some of the work we’re doing downtown and how it affects Little Saigon,” Harrell said.

Outreach workers say that people who used to occupy Third Avenue have spread to Belltown, Pioneer Square, Sodo and Capitol Hill as well. Analysis by The Seattle Times in 2016 showed a displacement of drug activity across the city after a similar crackdown downtown then.

As the school year started for Summit Sierra High School on South King Street, a block away from 12th and Jackson, Executive Director Andrew Crook said students and staff walked on the street to get to school because the sidewalk was too full.

Gurinder Purewal, owner at One Pot, said he’s essentially surrendered the dine-in part of his business because customers are reluctant to come in, and he’s had constant issues with broken doors and windows.

“Something needs to be done, housing them someplace,” Gurinder said.

Public safety concerns came to a head when nine people were stabbed in the course of two days in the neighborhood in November.

“Who would like to live in an environment like this?” a Chinatown International District resident said at a neighborhood public safety council meeting held a week after the stabbing.

Chloe Gale, policy director at REACH, said displacement and violence are connected.

“That is about stress level people who are different from different communities suddenly being put together,” Gale said.

She said she’s also concerned people are being displaced from services they need like addiction treatment, which are concentrated downtown.

“In the CID, you have to take two buses to get to any methadone clinic. It’s at least a 45-minute journey,” Gale said.

Why Little Saigon?

“Why here? That’s my question,” said Lee, co-chair of the Chinatown International District Public Safety Council. Many residents say their neighborhood acts as a dumping ground for the city because low incomes and language barriers make it harder for them to complain.

Staff who work closely with people on the streets say there are two reasons why disorder congregates in the neighborhood, a literal one and a historical one.

“That is where the drugs are being distributed,” said Andrew Constantino, an outreach worker at REACH and a former heroin user in Seattle. “There has always been a bit of a black market there.”

Gale, who has worked in homeless outreach for three decades in Seattle, said people on the streets seek proximity to the city center for access to services, hospitals, addiction treatment and economic opportunity. A decade ago, that used to be in the greenbelts south of Chinatown International District, often referred to as “The Jungle.”

In 2016, the city cleared out that area after years of violence and illicit activity there.

“I’m not sure where people thought those folks were gonna go, but they’re on our streets, and they’re in the CID, which they were always in. We just didn’t see them because they were under the freeway,” said Mikel Kowalcyk, who has worked in homeless outreach in Seattle for more than a decade.

Lisa Daugaard, executive director of Purpose Dignity Action, a homelessness and public safety organization, said the issues in “The Jungle” were never going to go away by clearing it out.

“It was never true that you could just have people that poor and that marginalized, and it’s not a problem,” Daugaard said. “It is a problem wherever they are.”

More recently, the state fenced off nearly all the greenways south of Chinatown International District as part of its program to remove homeless encampments and keep them from forming next to highways. That project housed nearly all the people living there, but it also eliminated areas out of public view to use and sell drugs.

Where next?

At the beginning of November, Seattle police along with other departments began pressure-washing sidewalks in Little Saigon, picking up trash three times a day while enforcing drug laws.

At 7:03 p.m. Wednesday, a police car drove up next to a crowd of dozens of people.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are clearing out Jackson and 12th Avenue,” an officer announced through his patrol car’s PA system into the 38-degree air.

Most of the crowd scattered immediately. The patrol car waited for stragglers while playing Jingle Bell Rock through its loud speakers. Within minutes, the sidewalks were clear of people. Many got on buses headed downtown or south.

By 7:30 p.m., city workers began picking up the trash left behind.

Harrell said there could be some displacement as a result of the city’s tactics, and that where people go will be dependent upon them.

“But we also want to make sure that we don’t have tolerance for unsafe conditions and unclean conditions,” Harrell said.

Harrell emphasized the city is also increasing treatment options. In the past few months, it launched a pilot program for first responders to administer medication to treat addiction following an overdose and added funding for treatment and detox beds.

In the short term, the city says it will respond to fluctuating conditions in different neighborhoods at different times.

“It is unacceptable for any one community to continuously bear the brunt of street disorder and unsafe activities,” said Callie Craighead, a spokesperson for the mayor.

The city increased funding for We Deliver Care, a street conflict de-escalation team, to expand to Little Saigon and other neighborhoods where new hot spots might emerge.

Where that will be hasn’t been decided yet.

Ivan Peña, 31, who has moved between the streets of downtown and Little Saigon for years, says that with the city’s crackdown in both places, he has just one option: “back to The Jungle.”