21st Century Viking: The homeless in Bergen Place aren’t the problem

In this week’s edition of the News-Tribune, there was an article about the increasing number of homeless people hanging out at Bergen Place Park. Ballard was chosen by the city to be an area that was going to become more densely populated. Ballard is a neighborhood in the middle of a large American city.

You can’t expect an urban neighborhood to become more densely populated and assume that none of the problems that plague cities are going to come up. The real issue here is how the people of Ballard approach and deal with the homeless that are in our midst.

There are many who want to help homeless people in some way and there are those who don’t want to help at all because it encourages them. Regardless of how you feel on this issue, there is one thing that truly bothers me and that is people who are upset by their mere presence.

If Ballard is supposedly so tolerant, why is everyone so upset by the sight of people who have nowhere else to go hanging out in a public area?

While there are homeless people who act like complete jerks and are messing up Bergen Place (and many other parks everywhere), there are also those who try to be respectful of others as they struggle to survive. The same could be said of people with jobs and a place to live who walk their dogs in the same parks and don’t pick up after them or people who don’t throw away their garbage or cigarette butts.

For too long, Ballard has refused to deal with the possibility that there could be a downside to all of this densification. It is unrealistic to expect that hard problems like this will not come up. The next question is how much of this are you going to take?

If you are too nice, then you run the risk of having homeless people flock to Ballard. But where are they going to go? Wherever you move in Seattle, there will always be another park. There are a lot of people who used to live in Ballard because it was affordable, but there are some who aren’t going to be forced to leave no matter high the rents or housing prices get.

There are no easy answers to these really tough questions. The issue of homeless people in Ballard isn’t going to magically go away even if the economy improves overnight.

No matter how good or bad things get, there will always be people who, for a myriad of reasons will be homeless. It is not as pretty and glamorous as a brand new condo building, but it is just as much a fact of life of living in Ballard.

There presence makes some people visibly uncomfortable. They would rather not see these people living their lives out in full view of everyone else. But don’t they have the right to sit on a bench in a public place? They pay their sales taxes, too. Is there someplace out of sight that you would recommend that would make you more comfortable?

I wish I had the answers to these questions. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to homelessness. Each person is unique. For every one incorrigible junkie or alcoholic, there is another person who wants to change their situation. There are many ways to help. Pick one. Just don’t tell me you don’t want them there because they have as much right to hang out at the park as you.

Questions, comments, column idea? Please contact Brian Le Blanc at brianleblanc76@yahoo.com or publish a comment.