Reader Questions

Your U District questions answered

You asked and we answered your questions about the U District. Be sure to check out all of our coverage on the neighborhood.

/ May 22, 2021


What other cities are getting right when it comes to fixing homelessness

The Salt Lake City skyline (📷: Flickr) Chronic homelessness is an issue affecting major cities from coast to coast. So it’s understandable that one of the first questions that comes to mind when many Seattleites think about homelessness is, “What have other states done successfully that we aren’t doing to fix this problem?” Kelly Gardner […]

/ November 14, 2019


The complicated costs of fixing homelessness in Seattle

Seattle has been in a construction boom for several years, but service providers say we still have a long way to go in closing our region’s affordability gap. (📷: Peter Daniel/Flickr) For the next installment in our ongoing series about chronic homelessness, we’re digging into the numbers to tackle a question we’ve heard from several […]

/ November 7, 2019


What causes chronic homelessness in Seattle?

(📷: A McLin/Flickr) Chronic homelessness is one of the most complicated issues facing Seattle and King County. And the difficulty begins with scoping the problem itself.  The first question in our four-part series on chronic homelessness comes from Courtney Stange-Tregear, who asks, “What are the primary causes of *chronic* homelessness as opposed to emergency or […]

/ October 23, 2019


Real Talk: Is it safe to swim in Lake Union?

(📷: Caitlin Moran) Lake Union is an iconic part of our local landscape and one of the easiest places for getting out on the water in Seattle. But swimming in the lake has traditionally been frowned upon due to the industrial activities that took place on the lake’s north end for several decades in the […]

/ September 10, 2019


Why can’t Seattle just build more affordable housing on the extra land it owns?

We’re in the middle of a housing crisis. What’s keeping us from building on our surplus land? The oversimplified answer: Building housing is hard.

/ January 22, 2019


How did the Central District become Seattle’s historically black neighborhood?

The answer involves a restaurant, generous neighbors, racism, and some seriously awful housing policies, like redlining.

/ January 15, 2019


Cast your vote: Which of your questions about homelessness should we answer first?

You sent in more than 200 honest questions about homelessness in Seattle. Which of these three should we tackle first? Cast your vote and help us decide.

/ July 10, 2018


What are you most curious about around homelessness in Seattle? We are taking your questions

Can we fix homelessness in Seattle? Hell yes we can. But first, we need to better understand what’s going on. That’s where you come in.

/ July 5, 2018


Can you pay for another Seattle bus passenger’s fare? It’s complicated

In May, reader Lesa Sullivan was on a RapidRide bus when something caught her eye: a fare enforcement officer talking to a woman about an expired transfer ticket. Although Lesa offered to pay for the woman’s ticket with her ORCA card or cash, the officer refused to let her. What happened?

/ June 6, 2018