Go West

Seattle, where I spent a weekend before my trip to Canada, was originally founded to satisfy the insatiable hunger for timber of the San Francisco bay area. The discovery of gold and the rapid population growth meant that San Francisco needed a lot more building material than it had. Conveniently, the area of modern-day Seattle had a sheer endless supply of thousand-year-old trees, which soon gave rise to a booming lumber-industry and a bustling population in the new city.

Despite seeming endless, the supply of tinder was in fact finite and Seattle needed a miracle to change its course and avoid fading into irrelevance…. 

Newspaper announcement of the gold find

And it got it. In the form of two tons of gold.

In 1896, the Portland docked in Seattle with sixty-eight men on board, who had made half a million dollars from one of the biggest gold fields ever found. This was the lifeline that the treeless lumber city of Seattle had needed and overnight the town turned into the stop-off point for those infected by the Gold Rush and setting out to make a fortune in Alaska.

Seattle boomed – businesses were born providing tens of thousands of prospective gold miners with everything they needed to survive a year in Alaska: beans, tea, soap, clothes, tents, cooking utensils, horses, everything. Seattle grew rich selling supplies and entertaining miners waiting for a boat to take them up the coast. As gold mining (as logging before) was an industry dominated by testosterone-rich single men, Seattle quickly developed into a largely lawless town in which rowdy men spent their money on gambling, drinking and girls.

Even though few miners actually found gold, the city of Seattle had hit the jackpot and continued its lucky streak: After the gold rush had died down, shipbuilding for the World War powered the city, followed by massive investments from Boeing and most recently, Microsoft, Amazon and other tech giants. After the rowdy lumberjacks, this technology boom helped the city attract entrepreneurs, engineers and technology enthusiast.  

Recently a new group of people started to join them.

The 2007 recession, ongoing job losses in the manufacturing sector and rising house prices all contributed to reducing the earnings of low-income households; sometimes up to a point where they could no longer afford to pay the rent (Rumour has it that rents in big cities have risen so much over the past years, that people who have a full-time job earning minimum wage cannot afford an apartment). As a result, many people were forced onto the streets and ended up sleeping in their cars, tents and also onto the streets.

While in the United States overall homelessness is declining, Seattle and other cities on the West Coast are seeing an increase. Most recent counts suggest that almost 12,000 people are homeless in Seattle with 4,000 of them sleeping rough every night.

People cite different reasons why the number of homeless in Seattle is rising. The most popular argument (at least among locals) is that homeless people from other cities are moving to the liberal West Coast in which officials are more willing to support them than elsewhere. People in Seattle told me that the local government is making shelter available (incl. in the city hall), handing out sleeping bags and tents. But it’s not only official efforts, there are also a lot of missions and charitable organisations who are looking after the homeless. And even individuals are doing their share to support those who’ve reached rock bottom: I saw several families (mother, father, children) spending their Saturday afternoon handing out warm meals and drinks to people in need. Other cities, so the rumour (or joke?) suggests, don’t do anything like that; they only give people a one-way bus ticket to Seattle.

Another reason for homelessness also quickly becomes obvious when walking through town: cuts in health care programmes focusing on mental health and substance abuse. 

With no access to health care, eroding social and economic status, substance abuse has increased sharply in the US; President Trump calls it an Opioid Epidemic.

In some ways, people suffering from an opioid addiction look like I imagine zombies would : they are aimlessly wondering the streets, staring into the distance and incomprehensibly mumbling to themselves or at others. Encountering them alone can be quite frightening.

In Seattle running into a homeless person is virtually unavoidable though: A couple of times I counted how many I saw on one 100m stretch of street and found that it was on average four people – on one side of the road, that is… In the afternoons, the numbers get a little less as some people head towards the missions in the hope of securing a bed for the night. Left are those who have lost hope and hit rock-bottom.

Fortune may have favoured the city of Seattle, but it wasn't always as kind to the people who came here looking for it...