Seattle City Wire

Christopher Rufo was so fed up with trash in Seattle that he decided to map it. 

“I wanted to understand the scale of the problem with more quantitative precision,” he wrote in the City Journal.

He asked the city for all public complaints about trash, needles, tents, feces and biohazardous waste that were made in 2018. 

| Courtesy of Gillfoto / Wikimedia Commons

“I then geocoded each complaint (19,000 of them) to create data visualization that I call the Great Seattle Trash Map,” Rufo said. 

“Each data point on the map demonstrates that homeless encampments, opioid addiction and mental illness have created significant disorder in almost every corner of Seattle,” he said.

Rufo believes Seattle is on the verge of a full-blown public health crisis because of homeless encampments. 

Seattle has seen a 400 percent increase in HIV infections, particularly among the homeless and prostitutes in the city’s northern corridor. Incidents of diseases like typhus, tuberculosis and trench fever are on the increase, Rufo said. Rufo linked the health problems to the trash.

Seattle came up with a novel approach to the trash problem with a pilot program to offer weekly garbage collection to ten of the more than 400 homeless camps. The program is not off to a very promising start, however. Only 26 percent of the trash bags that the city distributed were filled and left for pickup, the Seattle Times reported. 

Many cities treat homeless encampments the way Seattle used to: From time to time, municipal crews move in with trash trucks and “sweep away” the shopping carts, boxes and possessions of the people living there. Pressure from activists who called the practice “inhumane” caused Seattle to cut way back on the sweeps.

Rufo said the trash situation is out of control and believes his trash map demonstrates that homeless encampments are a big factor. 

Rufo's trash map showed that four of Seattle's wealthiest neighborhoods were not making trash complaints. 

Madison Park, Broadmoor, Laurelhurst and Windermere do not tolerate homeless encampments in their boundaries. Some neighbors have even hired security services to patrol and ward off would-be campers. 

Rufo said all of Seattle’s neighborhoods need the same protection. He is calling on Seattle to begin a campaign to clean up the streets.