Seattle cleaned up for the World Cup but only while the world was watching, commentator says

Seattle impressed World Cup visitors with cleaner streets and polished public spaces, but once the final whistle blew, the city's open-air drug crisis quickly returned to view, prompting one Seattle commentator to argue officials merely moved the problem out of sight rather than solving it.

"Addiction didn’t get better over those few weeks," Charlie Harger, host of Seattle's "Morning News" on KIRO Newsradio, wrote in a Wednesday op-ed. "Mental illness didn’t vanish. Permanent supportive housing didn’t suddenly fix what it has failed to fix here for years. People got moved. People got pushed away from the corners where a visitor might see them. I understand why the city did it. But if moving them is all we did, we didn’t solve a thing. We managed the view."

Harger said that the city has nothing to show for the "billions" it has spent to address the crisis. Seattle hosted six World Cup matches at Lumen Field, home of the city's Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks.

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Andrea Suarez dismantles a tent as garbage lies piled at a homeless encampment on March 13, 2022, in Seattle, Washington. (John Moore/Getty Images)

"Too many on the left have confused tolerance with compassion, as if letting someone use fentanyl on a sidewalk is kindness," Harger said. "Too many on the right are right to demand order, but sometimes talk as if removal alone is a solution. I don’t buy either one. It would be nice if either were demonstrably true."

Harger continued, "They’re not. We’ve spent a decade and billions of dollars on one, and the overdose count went up every year. The places that tried the right’s version just moved the same people to a different sidewalk."

According to Seattle.gov, in 2024, the city of Seattle spent $153.8 million on homelessness services through its Human Services Department.

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The Seattle skyline. (Reuters/Chris Helgren)

In 2023, KOMO News reported that while the city spent almost $1 billion on homelessness in over a decade, "the number of unsheltered people continues to rise." A Seattle Times opinion piece reported in June that King County has roughly 16,000 people experiencing homelessness on a given night.

"I look at this like a dad, because I am one," Harger wrote. "When I pass somebody curled up in a doorway, gray-skinned and staring at nothing, the politics are the last thing I care about. The first thing I think is that this person was once four years old. Somebody packed their lunch. Somebody checked under the bed for monsters. Somebody looked at that kid and saw a whole life coming."

"That kid is dying by inches in front of a Walgreens now, and we’ve built a whole vocabulary to talk ourselves into believing that watching it happen is the kind thing to do," he continued.

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Residents near Seattle’s Aurora Avenue erected makeshift barricades after repeated shootings and rising gun violence in the neighborhood. (Fox 13 Seattle)

As a parent, Harger said he would not approach the crime and homelessness crisis the way his city is.

"I can’t get there," he said. "If that were my son in the doorway, I wouldn’t want the city to guard his right to die in it. I’d want someone to go get him. Inside. Dry. Clean long enough to remember who he was before the drug ate it. Call that cruelty if you want. Any parent who’s ever pulled a kid out of that hole calls it love."

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In an aerial view, a homeless encampment, known informally as "Dope Slope," stands covered in garbage near downtown Seattle on March 12, 2022, in Seattle, Washington. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Fixing the crisis, according to Harger, has less to do with compassion and more to do with accountability.

Fox News Digital reached out to Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson for comment.