The Harvard Market shopping center which has wrestled with increasing challenges around drug crimes at the corner of Broadway and Pike is within the new Capitol Hill SODA borders
Capitol Hill will have a new “Stay out of Drug Area” covering the neighborhoods around Capitol Hill Station and Cal Anderson Park and Seattle will re-implement exclusion laws hoped to throttle drug and prostitution-related crimes in new zones across the city.
In a five hour session Tuesday filled mostly with public testimony against the laws and with a phalanx of security and police officers called in to quell any disruptive protest in chambers, the Seattle City Council voted to approve the twin bills re-creating the city’s SODA and “Stay out of Area Prostitution” zones — regulations repealed by the council only four years ago after years of criticism over their ineffectiveness and dangerous implications for the victims of sex work-related crime they were supposed to be helping.
The new zones will be located on Capitol Hill, and in the International District, Belltown, the University District, and Pioneer Square with the new SOAP zone covering Aurora. More could be added.
Bob Kettle, chair of the council’s public safety committee, said Tuesday night after the successful vote that this new push for SODA and SOAP will be different than the city’s past attempts at exclusion zones. “This legislation uses a data driven approach to achieve the goals in our Strategic Framework plan,” Kettle said. “I am appreciative for the support our legislation has received from the community and my colleagues, and I am grateful for the opportunity to make Seattle safer.”
Under the legislation passed Tuesday, a designation will allow a judge to bar drug or prostitution law offenders busted in a zone from reentering the area for up to two years. A SODA or SOAP order can also be imposed as a condition of release from jail. Violating an order will become a new gross misdemeanor, punishable by up to 364 days in jail and a $5,000 fine.
The new SODAs
Seattle’s previous SODAs covered much of the city until 2010
As part of shaping the borders of the new exclusion zones, Kettle said these new areas were drawn so they won’t restrict access to needed treatment and services. The council has also promised an increase in services to support sex workers and addiction issues but included no specific funding in the new bills.
A council press release on the new SOAP restrictions says the legislation will limit orders to “buyers and promoters (by removing sellers), requiring development of training for police officers on trauma informed best practices for working with survivors of commercial sexual exploitation in consultation with survivor groups, and creating arrest policies that explicitly state diversion and referral to service, treatment, and safe housing is the preferred approach for prostitution loitering for sellers.” Amendments related to performance measures and reporting requirements were also added.
District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth drove the effort to add a Capitol Hill SODA zone. The restrictions will be “established as the area of the Capitol Hill neighborhood bordered on the north by East Thomas Street, on the south by East Union Street, on the east by 11th Avenue, and on the west by Harvard Avenue.”
It will include Cal Anderson, the busy Capitol Hill Station light rail and transit facility, and the areas around the Harvard Market shopping center as well as the core of the Pike/Pine nightlife scene. How the presence of a major public transit hub in the middle of one of the city’s exclusion zones plays out will remain to be seen.
The Capitol Hill SODA comes amid what Hollingsworth has said will be multiple efforts to address crime, drug use, and homelessness around the Broadway and Pike/Pine core including investments “reinvigorating” Cal Anderson Park.
Hollingsworth has also said her office is starting discussions around extending a similar program to the $15 million-a-year Downtown Seattle Association’s ambassador program up into Pike/Pine that would put workers onto streets to help keep sidewalks and alleys clean and deal with low level public safety issues. That program could be paid for by fees levied on nearby businesses and properties.
Hollingsworth told CHS that one of the many lessons from her recent personal travel to Amsterdam was what she saw as an emphasis on public safety and cleanliness in densely populated city areas. Hollingsworth said, like Amsterdam, Capitol Hill is “a gem” that must be protected.
Broadway at Pike’s street disorder issues loom large. This summer, the city identified the area as it made the list — twice — for Seattle’s top areas for Crime and Overdose Concentration according to the Seattle Police Department.
Meanwhile, the use of SODA is being emphasized around areas where concerns focus on street disorder and drug use not areas, so far, where crimes like gun violence or gang activity has proliferated.
How frequently zone orders are issued will be watched closely as will the impact the new laws have on policing and prosecution of lower level misdemeanor crimes in the city. Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison has championed the return of SODA and SOAP.
“For the past two years I have heard loud and clear from law enforcement that they need new legal tools to disrupt open-air criminal drug market activity in many areas of our city, and the tragedy of human trafficking on Aurora Avenue North,” Davison said in a statement from the council Tuesday night. “I have worked on and advocated for these two new ordinances to answer that call. I look forward to partnering with the Seattle Police Department on strategic enforcement to help impacted neighborhoods and protect vulnerable victims. Thank you to the Seattle City Council for stepping up to the moment.”
Councilmember Tammy Morales of South Seattle’s District 2 was the sole vote against both bills.
“The City of Seattle had both SODA and SOAP zones for over 20 years and research has proven these orders did not reduce drug use or human trafficking,” Morales said after the vote, saying the city should instead follow the recommendations from this summer’s auditor’s report (PDF) “which provides a road map on how we can take an evidence-based approach to address where overdoses and crime are concentrated.”
“Instead, this legislation will intentionally make it more difficult for people to access critical services across the city,” Morales said.
Mayor Bruce Harrell was not included in the council’s statement on the votes. Harrell’s office is focused this week on announcements around planned public health investments in the upcoming city budget that are expected to help buttress law and order and enforcement initiatives like SODA and SOAP with prioritized spending on needed services.
The new zones, meanwhile, could be in place soon. The bills would go into effect 30 days after they are signed by the mayor.
HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
“The City of Seattle had both SODA and SOAP zones for over 20 years and research has proven these orders did not reduce drug use or human trafficking”
I don’t think this is the intent. The intent is to disperse the activity and make these areas not absolute hell holes.
And giving cops more power for…. no reason.
Honestly? It’s needed. I now have drug deals outside my home most nights, human feces I have to clean up at least twice per month outside my door, people under the influence and wielding weapons chase me down the street, and my dog tries to eat what is clearly drugs off the sidewalk while we try and doge used needles. How is that safe for the public? We need intervention, and honestly should look into what British Columbia is now proposing and involuntarily institutionalize these folks who clearly need help, but don’t want it.
no reason? I have lived in two of those zones. they are hellholes. when i lived on pike/pines a few years ago people where getting shot in the entrance to my apartments. I currently live in another of those hotspots and deal with constant crime including shootings. I’d honestly support police drones patrolling the streets at this point. I don’t work my ass off trying to keep from being on the streets again so i can live like this.
Activities like this do not disperse. It would be antithetical to their nature.
just give me 2018 level concentration and I’ll be happy
It is great to see the city of Seattle implementing the Portuguese model of disrupting entrenched open air drug markets and investing in those areas to reinvigorate them.
The Portuguese model included a system of safety nets, including housing, to go along with compulsory treatments that contributed to its great success.
This does nothing of the sort and is meant to merely be a dog whistle by Ann, Bruce Sara and her ilk.
Nothing will change and this will likely go to the courts.
Meanwhile our conservative council is also doing what they can to kneecap the upcoming affordable housing funding referendum due to pressure from their corporation and wealthy constituents.
and that is the core problem with america and seattle. leftists push these ideas that have worked elsewhere and neglect the people side of the equation which leads to more money spent and negligible results.
The fact that you think “leftists” are the problems in this country shows either your extreme bias or extreme gullibility. I’m not even sure how your reply is even relevant to my comment.
But I can promise you, it’s not the “leftists” that have caused the problems that plague our country. But those that are causing the problems thank you for your ignorance.
There is nothing great about this. Harrell and his clown group are doing unprecedented and undemocratic level fascism here.
“Fascism” LOLOLOL I hope you get to spend 24 hours under an actual fascist regime. Then maybe you’ll reset your outrage meter.
Yeah, I guess ICE agents wholesale raping kids is just a healthy Liberal Democracy that voted for it, right?
they are the elected leaders…what exactly is undemocratic here?
Thanks for linking to the audit! 67 pages of evidence-based suggestions. Not any of them pointing even remotely to SODA/SOAP as a solution. I ask why does the city order these very interesting deeply researched reports only to ignore them? Oh yeah, because it was ordered by the last council, the one that actually cared about residents instead of resident businesses.
The DA gives police more power and declares victory. We’ll be in the same place or worse two years from now when the results finally roll in and the crime and overdoses have worsened and more families’ lives will be ruined with jail time.
This legislation makes me so angry. This is how Seattle dies.
The report linked appears to me to be mainly focused on how to decrease overdoses. While that may be noble cause, if it’s done at the expense of the neighborhood, which is what has been happening, people who live there will reach the limits of their tolerance, which is what has been happening….
Sorry – but no… it’s not just businesses who are fed up with the outcomes of the last council. A million reports aren’t going to convince people who actually have to live with walking through areas like the Broadway market that a change isn’t needed.
So then, where do these people go from here? Somewhere else right? Two years from now it’ll be all better?
Okay man, whatever
Care to explain why others aren’t entitled to share their opinion and observations, without you telling them to come up with solutions?
Totally agree it would be nice if everyone did have a solution to offer, especially if it actually worked. I’m not necessarily convinced this stupid zoning nonsense addresses the actual problem. But that doesn’t deter from the fact that it’s been getting worse on a lot of fronts over the last few years.
Yes, exactly this. I actually wasn’t commenting on whether or not I think this particular program will work… but rather on the other person suggesting that the last council already had solutions… and the supposition that it’s only businesses who care… And I don’t think the last council did have those solutions. They were far too willing to dismiss the idea that the residents of these areas actually have needs – safety, cleanliness, livability- that are important too. Continually throw the majority under the bus in favor of a few who are troubled and troubling and it’s no surprise that people eventually rebel and vote you out…
They are entitled to tell others what to think. Just like you and I. Folks can’t think for themselves? Their skin is so thin. They are easily led.
Simple common sense says we are kicking the can. Sweep now, figure the rest out later is the councils policy. People do not care. As long as their store front is clear. You’ll see SODA popping up everywhere now.
“…families lives ruined with jail time.” And you don’t think families lives aren’t ‘ruined’ by son/dad/brother Johnny permanently bent over, waving a foil and straw, his pants down around his ankles, no shoes, just wet socks, looking like a victim out of a concentration camp?
I can tell you for a fact that even though jail was not at all what we wanted for my schizophrenic brother who started doing drugs (just legal weed) and harassing people in a small town (he thought the weed made him ‘social’), it was actually the thing that broke the cycle he was on, put the scare in him from doing that again, and changed the family dynamic to get him to the safe place he needed to be.
Your outrage is commendable, but is it based on real life experience or just progressive buzzwords and reports? My big question is, are they actually going to enforce this, or is it just more ‘we’re doing something’ cosplay? I’m a longtime liberal, but as Nando say, we’ve all had enough of the craziness, in large part because of the broken window theory, that unchecked crime and anti-social behavior leads to more and more participating in it.
As someone that has buried a cousin, who died due to pneumonia she caught while she was in the street due to her drug induced state, we would’ve preferred a call from the PD informing us that she’s detoxing behind bars or asking for help to put her in rehab instead of the call from the Coroner to come claim her body. Arrests can be sealed when an addict becomes clean. Coffins don’t re-open after the drugs have claimed victims.
How does this help stem the flow of yuppies to the hill?
By banning crime duh! They banned crime!
Not perfect, but a step in the right direction.
Nope,
It’s a gross throwback to Reagan crime 80s. We tried this and it just puts more poor and LGBTQ and BIPOC people in cages. I wish the conservative city council would think beyond cops and over criminalization to fix poverty problems. They get cause and effect backwards.
You do know that there is a black middle class in Seattle. Maybe what the city council is doing is trying to ensure that Seattle remains a viable option for the BIPOC middle class instead of appeasing to the homeless, socialists, and street addicts.
Calling this city council “conservative” is akin to Donald Trump calling Kamala a communist. Just because you say it, doesn’t mean its true.
Exactly. I’m sure there are many Seattleites, me included, who welcome this legislation. It’s not a panacea, but it will help .
Other first world countries: we’ve have a system of safety nets, including housing, mental health services, addiction treatment and job finding services for decades that has reduced our homeless populationa to minimal amounts.
American “Tough on Crime” politicians: throwing the homeless, mentally ill and drug addicts in jail for over half a century doesn’t seem to be working, despite everyone and every study showing it actually has a detrimental effect. So we’re going to try exile!
Also, not even doing that… We choose the Performance Arts.
If you actually traveled to these places you would also see that they don’t allow open air drug markets to destroy neighborhoods and people’s lives. They shut them down to disrupt the cycle just like the new council is trying to do with this legislation. There is a huge enforcement component that “harm reduction” advocates in the United States and Canada fail to acknowledge. When the guy that started the Portuguese program traveled to the “safe” drug injection site in Vancouver he was shocked and appalled by what he saw. His response was that what he saw was not at all what they are doing in Portugal.
In other countries, they force people on the streets to enter treatment, addiction services and housing. There is no choice.
In American, we don’t offer those services anywhere close enough to a useful level; instead we throw them in jail or constantly harass them on a human rights violation level.
The problem with us (and Canada) trying to offer Portuguese level services is they are typically kneecapped before they are even implemented, typically by conservatives, as is the case for the Vancouver system. The reason is that if homeless, mentally ill and drug addicts don’t exist, they’ve lost a valuable thing to scream about. Even then, the Vancouver system has been shown to a success, though nowhere near what it could be, properly implemented.
Not just a system, but a well-funded and supported infrastructure that’s been in the works and in place for decades.
If we hadn’t let the Republicans butcher mental health care in the 70s and 80s, we’d have a well running publicly funded mental health care network, over 45 years in the making, with tens of thousands of talented mental health professionals ranging from well-paid social workers, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, doctors, and specialists (eg. Trauma, childhood abuse, PTSD, veterans, refugees, etc). A publicly funded mental health care system able to quickly pivot to address an increase in drug addictions and address it before it comes a crisis. Universities and research institutions constantly researching and revamping outdated procedures and policies and a government to constantly updating policies related to mental health. That’s what we’ve been seeing in Europe, especially in Portugal, the Netherlands, and Germany.
Since we don’t have that infrastructure in place, we’re left with what we have now.
this is SUCH a joke. Joy you lost my vote next cycle. You are done.
This is a good first step. Letting people ingest poison is immoral. It not only destroys the drug addicts’ lives but also all residents. Sidebar: Remember, China is purposively importing fentanyl precursor chemicals to Mexican drug cartels to kill as many Americans as possible. This is one of main reasons why U.S./China relations have deteriorated. They are killing 100k+ of our citizens each year….and we let it happen.
The irony of course is that many of these areas couldreally use some soap…and hot water. and a scrub brush.
That is actually happening too, amazingly. Even though I’d vowed to not do it again, I ventured to the downtown Target store. Pike between 2nd and 4th was freshly washed, smelled like soap rather than urine and body funk, and not lined with people lying or nodding on the sidewalk. I was pleasantly surprised.
I agree. Why can’t the sidewalks on Pike/Pine and Broadway on be powerwashed a couple of times a year? I assume that’s the property owners’ responsibility? Can the city enforce that with fines?
Agree. The Broadway BIA is charged with keeping the street clean, so it would be great if they would step up and arrange regular power-washing. But I’m not sure that work is budget feasible.
Wait – so now crime is illegal in these zones?