Seattle's water fountains and the June heat wave

Dear Diary,

In today's Seattle Times, a front page story indicates shut-off water fountains (sigh, park drinking water fountains) as one of Seattle's heat wave preparation failures.  Now, you and I documented those shut off fountains in May, but a comment on one of your pages, dear Diary, and a fountain I've observed repeatedly for myself, but not yet told you about, showed that during June, the city had turned at least a few more on.  And after the heat wave, we've found and revealed numerous park fountains on that were off in May.

Furthermore, Seattle Public Utilities, before the heat wave, published a pseudo-map of running street water fountains.  It was incomplete, and it lied some, as I've documented since belatedly learning of it, but most of the fountains it lists that I've checked both exist and were running when I found them, as were a bunch of the fountains it omitted.

From my perspective, having followed Seattle's water fountains desultorily for years and rather more assiduously for the past year-and-some, Seattle's water fountain response to the heat wave wasn't a failure.  It may not have been any better than a C, but it wasn't a failure, and at the very least, post-heat wave, Seattle is heading towards an A.  (It is not, in this case, stupid to close the barn door only after the horses escape.  There could very well be more heat waves this summer.)

Let's back out.  The excuse officials have used, probably coast to coast, but certainly around here, to save on water bills by shutting off drinking water fountains, is a valid excuse, it just isn't a good one.  Early in the pandemic, dear Diary, even later than when you were born, it was accepted wisdom that COVID-19 could be spread by touching a surface on which the virus was concentrated.  This is what underlies the mania for sanitiser that has driven much of this country's hygiene theatre this past year and more, for example.  This accepted wisdom was wrong, however, or at least beside the point:  maybe it really is possible to catch COVID-19 by touching infected surfaces, but it's much easier to catch it by breathing, and that's how the vast majority of patients caught it and are still catching it.  You may remember, dear Diary, that at the same time as this touch thing was believed, we were also being told not to mask.  That's how committed, in particular, the CDC was to the touch theory.

Even after the CDC backed down, which it did far too late last year, it continued to represent the touch theory in its detailed pages, notably those relevant to outdoor water fountains.  My belief is that it did so because what those pages actually called for was frequent cleaning ("at least daily"), and cleanliness is next to godliness anyway.  Yes, I really think the CDC maintained that advice, thus justifying this year's Durkan Drought, on the basis of something that unrelated to COVID-19 and unresponsive to strained municipal budgets.  Most of the advice in the main page cited in this context isn't really relevant to outdoors (the rarity of outdoor transmission is another thing the CDC was slow to admit), but when I researched this on May 18, a more often updated FAQ specifically recommended against trying to disinfect sidewalks.  However, a page about buildings, of all things, gives reasonably clear outdoor-specific instructions, and backs up this idea of washing outdoor water fountains.

Now, dear Diary, if any of your readers have been checking those links, they've found that the main page about parks, the first link in the previous paragraph, has effectively been cancelled.  It's "no longer being updated".  The Internet Archive shows that this notice was inserted sometime between June 9 and June 24 of this year.  Far too late, but still before the heat wave.  A city that was thinking of publicly available water as a Good Thing, that it should try to offer its citizens, would have checked that page regularly, and noticed that notice before I did so this morning.  For all my complaints about Seattle's policy throughout the pandemic, it seems clear that Seattle did that, hence the changes announced in June and those I've found so far in July.

It's hard for me to believe that I'm defending the City of Seattle, on water fountains, against my friends at the Seattle Times, but it's true, dear Diary.  Now let me recover from that shock for a while before explaining how Tacoma's response has differed.

Awkwardly On-Topic

Dear Diary,

I wanted to dismiss this as off-topic to you, but I can't.  True, it has nothing to do with parks, or hygiene, or (except as a dark mirror) homelessness in general.  But I've always made my own homelessness prominent in my writing on that topic, and perhaps nowhere more than in you.  Not just as a random example, either.  I'm well aware that by being middle-class in origin (and standards, albeit Bohemian middle class for those), college-educated, and non-trivially white, I seek sort of a "there but for the grace of God" effect among those likeliest to read me.  This is probably part of why you have few faithful readers, dear Diary, but more who read what they can stand and then leave.

Well, as it happens, I'm trying to leave myself, which is the point all that verbiage is trying to hide.  I think most homeless people keep a desultory lookout for chances to improve their lives, but without much imagination for wholesale change.  But the Seattle Times profile that recently brought new readers to you, dear Diary, also brought about an attempt at just such wholesale change, to return me to the housed workforce.  As I write this, it's anyway raised enough to get me out of COVID winter.

I'll be narrating, as I continue with the January hikes, events that make me readier to leave homelessness, and maybe to return to housedness.  Some of these events make it harder to finish the series, and I'll probably pop into and out of a motel soon to be named if only for that reason.  In February, which it'll probably be before I can return to boring few readers with "Land and Water" and working on your last series, dear Diary, I expect to be in a hotel, motel, or if I'm lucky SRO the whole month.  With the hope that by March I might, really for the first time since I came to Seattle, be stably housed.

Or to abbreviate:  To apply the purity standards of 1980s alt-rock to homelessness, I'm selling out, and cursing the rest of you, dear Diary, with the dread shade of inauthenticity.

This is, of course, a dark mirror of another path.  The government could have paid for the hotel (though probably not the blog-enabling motel, although its stimulus money will in fact pay for that), could have eased the transition out of the hotel.  But I've already lived through two entire presidential terms homeless, and would expect the current one to pass too before the government noticed me, shouting as I've been since 2014.  Some might argue that things are different now, but I dismissed insta-change in the first Times article to quote me (and publicise you, dear Diary), and the recent hikes have only driven home how right I was.

So I should get on with narrating them, but first, dear Diary, my thanks.  You're where all these events started, and I won't forget that.

We've Been Scooped!

Dear Diary,

Isn't it wonderful?  Yippee!  Yahoo!  Both parks and hygiene are now cool enough again in Seattle to get covered by major media!  In the same week!  It's like winning the lottery!

That Sink in the Alley Is Supposed to Be There by Nathalie Graham for The Stranger, October 16

Seattle Opens New Waterfront Park on Portage Bay in 'Spectacular Spot' Where Police Station Once Stood by Daniel Beekman for The Seattle Times, October 17

I haven't seen a "Seattle Street Sink" yet, but did, purely by chance, visit the new park on its first day open last week, so, dear Diary, I hope you're as comforted as I am that we aren't alone now, and I'll get on with putting my ideas about, and pictures of, the new park into you soon.

Becoming Clean

Dear Diary,

Exciting news:  You're about to become known!  Some of your pages may be read by more than ten people, believe it or not.  And there's a dim chance that people will tell stories about you, and about me.

One story that might be told is that I'm some random homeless guy who got it into his head to write you.  This would not be particularly true, but an especially nasty counter-argument might claim that I'm not homeless at all.

See, I'm not without resources - friends, family, and at the moment even my own, since my $1200 came the other day.  I could certainly go spend a week or three in a hotel, and miss out on all the exciting parks news with which you, dear Diary, are filled.

Nor is this just a theoretical possibility.  You've come along so late, dear Diary, in this shutdown, because I did spend the three weeks from March 14 to April 4 in two hotels, thanks to a friend.  This friend is both professionally and personally concerned with public health.  I had at the time a nasty, incredibly long-lasting cold, and my friend (who caught it from me)  wanted me quarantined.  The bait for me was that it seemed a real chance to change my life, although the specific trigger that led me to accept the idea was the libraries' closure.

As it turned out, it was not a chance to change my life.  I'm very bad at job-hunting, but even I could tell there were strong headwinds on that front.  More importantly, I couldn't find any way to shrink the rent to something my friend could pay long enough to enable a real job search.  Most ads for cheap rent were fraudulent; the few others demanded that I have income, not just a friend, even for a three-month sublet.

So I decided to stop.  My cold had finally ended, and it was obviously a waste of money to keep slinking from one historically cheap hotel to the next, especially as their prices began to rebound.  There are better ways to change my life.

I hope not to be homeless in three years, but, well, I've hoped that for most of the past eight years, and it's yet to come true.  While there's a sense in which I am, right now, that stereotype "homeless by choice", that's because all the other choices are worse.

The reason the story that I'm some random homeless guy who thought you, dear Diary, up on the spur of the moment - the reason that story isn't true is that I'm not at all random, nor was the idea for you, dear Diary, spontaneous.

In my youth, I worked on a college newspaper for several years, and conceived journalistic ambitions.  The only advice I got as to how to fulfill these was to write, so I did.  But it rarely paid my rent, my ambitions were going nowhere, and the writing petered out.

It came back, as the second page in you, dear Diary, suggests, when my glasses were stolen.  Again, it was too desultory to add up to much, but it got me used to writing about my homelessness.

So much for me being random.  You aren't either, dear Diary; as your other credits page practically shouts, you're a successor to a lot of articles by Erica C. Barnett.  I e-mailed her March 26 about a then-recent story, and eventually started to visit the parks of northeastern Seattle in emulation of her looks at southeastern parks.  The list of parks in your sadly unread page "Our Main Characters", dear Diary, comes from that work, and from my time in hotels, before it became survival information for me.  I was, at the time, contemplating a different story, which I pestered Ms. Barnett to publish; when she refused, I started thinking of writing it as a blog.  And then, one extremely rainy day, I hiked to Magnuson Park, and there you were, dear Diary.

Ms. Barnett was the first person I contacted, trying to make you known, dear Diary, but near as I can tell, she hasn't read any of your pages.  Instead, the person who's read more of those pages than anyone else is going to make you known, dear Diary, and now I think these explanations are done.

Credits, tardily

I didn't get the idea for this Diary out of the blue.  Probably the first signal to which I really paid attention was an article by Nathalie Graham in The Stranger:

Seattle Just Green-lit New Hygiene Access for the Homeless
March 18

Graham is also the author of the next relevant article in The Stranger:

That Sink in the Alley Is Supposed to Be There
October 16

However, most of what I've read has been by Erica C. Barnett of The C Is for Crank, now PubliCola.  See in particular:

City Ditches Gold-Plated Shower Vendor, item 3
September 18

Mobile Shower Immobilized, item 2

September 15

Found: One City Shower Trailer, Not Quite Open, in Secluded Location with Minimal Foot Traffic
May 23

The City Has Been Renting Two Shower Trailers Since March. If They Open, Each Shower Could Cost $500
May 19

County Rents Hygiene Trailers for a Fraction of What the City Is Paying
April 28

City Plans to Reopen Restrooms at Six [Five] Library Branches
April 21

Seattle Pays Premium for Shower Trailers
April 15

Advocates Beg for Toilets, Running Water
April 8

[Untitled second item]
April 7

Hepatitis A Spreads among Ballard Homeless Population, as Hygiene Stations and Restrooms Remain in Short Supply
April 2

The City Funded New Hygiene Trailers Last Year, but Never Bought Them
April 1

Seattle's Public Restroom Crisis
March 30

Potty Plan Scaled Back [item 2]
March 27

More Port-a-Potties in Seattle [item 2]
March 25

Library Closures Leave Homeless Patrons Stranded [item 1]
March 14

There have also been articles in The Seattle Times.  I don't remember any as breaking new ground, but one of the authors sent me a list, and my memory may be wrong.  So judge for yourself.  These stories have seemed to be exempt from the site's otherwise somewhat unpredictable paywall, but more recently have seemed not to be, so no promises.

A game-changer for homelessness?
May 3, by Sydney Brownstone, Scott Greenstone and Anna Patrick, with contributions by Alan Berner.  Not primarily about this topic, but since it quotes me on the topic, and is what publicised this blog, I can hardly leave it out.

Seattle will reopen 5 library bathrooms during coronavirus pandemic
April 21, by Sydney Brownstone and Daniel Beekman, with a contribution from an unidentified photographer

Here's what the Seattle area has - and hasn't - done to protect its homeless population from coronavirus
April 11, by Sydney Brownstone and Anna Patrick with contributions from Scott Greenstone and Dean Rutz.  My memory was clearly wrong on this one.

King County faces 2 outbreaks at once, as hepatitis A spreads amid coronavirus pandemic
April 8, by Sydney Brownstone and Scott Greenstone with a contribution from Mark Nowlin

People living outside in Seattle have far fewer options for protecting from coronavirus
March 12, by Sydney Brownstone with contributions by Lauren Flannery, Anna Patrick, Scott Greenstone, Lauren Frohne and Dean Rutz

I first learnt of the most recent story via The Seattle Times, but have been unable to read it there because of the paywall. However, it was originally written for, and published by, the Pew Trusts' non-profit Stateline, which has not paywalled it.
The Pandemic Has Closed Public Restrooms, and Many Have Nowhere to Go
July 23, by Alex Brown, with several uncredited photos; not Seattle-specific, but focuses on Seattle.

Your correspondent

I have something of a record as a homeless man in Seattle, if you want to know more about me:

Stealing from the Homeless
November 2014

It's the End of Food Stamps as We Know It and I Feel Fine
November 2015

I am Joe Bernstein, a homeless man in Seattle: AMA
June 2016

Counting the Homeless Is Hard
January 2017