Many leave Seattle as progressive government continues to fail its people

Last week, Smead Capital Management, a company that manages $1.58 billion in client accounts, said that it would be pulling up stakes of their headquarters in Seattle and putting down stakes in Phoenix.

The final straw for Smead? The CHAZ occupation that is drawing into its third week.

“We’re hearing rumors of 40-story buildings that will be only 20-percent occupied by October,” President and CEO Cole Smead told KTAR News. “My biggest concern for Seattle was what the business community is going to come back to, and what kind of businesses are going to come back for customers.”

But while Seattle recently has been one of the fastest, if not the fastest, growing cities in the country, a lot of people are looking to leave, precisely because of the failures of its progressive government.

“According to a study based on census data,” said a report released early this year, “Seattle saw the largest population growth out of all large US cities between 2017 to 2018. The report states that Seattle’s population grew by 90,731 persons, a 13.9% change in population across five years.”

As the report notes, they stopped counting in 2018 — a good thing for Seattle because things were about to change.

In 2018, the Seattle Times published data that said suddenly 100,000 people were leaving the city each year, citing homelessness, property crime and the high cost of living as amongst the most pressing reasons for relocation.

The article was the result of a widely-read op-ed at the time in which one Seattle resident who was fed up and leaving said: “Slowly but surely, Seattle has become an angry place.”

The writer said that the $15 minimum wage, anger at city police for doing their job, progressive bigotry and hypocrisy in politics in Seattle played large roles in his decision to leave.  

The subject hit a nerve with Seattle residents: The article rang up over 1,500 comments and remained the most read article for the Seattle Times for days.

“[S]tubborn facts and a hurting middle class don’t seem to faze the City Council which seems far more concerned about issues over which it has zero control, such as climate change and foreign policy — than it does about issues over which it has at least a modicum of control, such as the cost of living, homelessness, crime, traffic and potholes,” concluded Alex Berezow, the author of the editorial. “For our City Council, virtue-signaling is more important than governing.”

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