patrickt3

Nobody actually likes the industrial district, especially the mayors office. It's full of great paying jobs and opportunity. Unfortunately it is the dumping ground for homeless and anything else found undesirable. My wife and I both work here about a block away from each other. I can't walk to her work for lunch and have to drive since homeless encampments and unlicensed RVs take up the side of the road and the entire sidewalk. Their S#!* is figuratively and literally everywhere. There is only one side of the street with a sidewalk here. Occasionally police make them move but they are back in a day or two. Additionally, we have to look where we are walking as there are discarded needles everywhere. Glad that they are mostly bright orange now. If you park a vehicle here overnight, they (homeless) will cut your fuel line to siphon off gas. My wife and I also live in West Seattle. Our commute is 3.6 miles. Since there are no off ramps that go south near our work, we usually try to take the lower bridge. I know a 3.6 mile commute may seem enviable, but one day last year it took us 1 hour and 48 minutes to get into work. It can frequently take 45 minutes. When there is no traffic (3AM), the commute time is about 6 minutes. The lower bridge is currently closed for at least a week. We can get to work from the upper bridge with a lot of back tracking, but getting home right now is close to impossible without going 12 miles out of the way. There are also no entrance ramps onto the upper West Seattle bridge from the south. Unless you can pull a U-turn on first, the only way to get on the upper bridge is to go up Alaska or 4th to get back on 1st Ave S to get on to the bridge. Side streets that used to let you make a legal turn around have recently been closed. Both routes are frequently blocked by trains that may stay there, occasionally moving back and forth for up to 40 minutes. State says they can't block a road for more than 10 minutes, but it is not enforced. I just lost my entire lunch being stuck behind a train. The only other route available for me to get home would have taken up hour. I just don't understand how an area that provides so many jobs can be so neglected by the city. In a way, I can understand Seattle pushing out all the industrial jobs out of SODO. It's kind of a tourist area with the new domes. Several of our neighboring companies have moved way south, or way north. The commute and work area in the industrial district has just become too depressing. We pay over 1k a month in property taxes and feel that the town, our working neighborhood, and city in general, has become unlivable. I suppose we could get jobs somewhere else, but I don't see how it would improve our situation since West Seattle just has such awful access issues unless you work downtown. They keep allowing more and more building permits while ignoring necessary infrastructure improvements.
The leadership of this city obviously couldn't give a c&@p about the industrial district despite all it provides. The homeless get a free pass to do what they want, tax payers have to watch where they step to avoid discarded needles, piles of excrement, dumpster and RV fires (seriously, lot's of RVs on fire here). Transit plans, buses, and off/on ramps only apply to those that work downtown. We are sick of paying a premium to live and work here only to be treated like $#!t by city council. After 27 years here, starting a family, building our home where we thought we would be forever, we are leaving. The quality of life here has gone to .....

TLDR: high crime, homelessness, RVs on fire, infrastructure issues, poor condition roads, low access, trains blocking everything, but really great jobs if you can get to work here and not step on a used hypodermic needle or a giant pile of excrament.